Ok, this isn’t the most romantic song by any stretch of the imagination. But it’s sweet sounding, and it’s fun, and it’s Steve Miller Band.

This could be a nice introduction song, or even a cake cutting song perhaps? The perfect number for a rock & roll wedding, or anyone who’s looking for some family friendly upbeat songs.

Do you know all the details of your photographer’s contract by heart? How do they handle glare on glasses? What’s their favorite moment to capture during a wedding? There are tons of important questions you should be asking when you’re interviewing potential photographers. Since I’ve been knee deep in this over the last few weeks, I’d thought I’d share the list of questions I compiled:

1. Basic packages and pricing info – this is probably on their website, or at least a ball park is, but they should be happy to go over all the packages, including: how many hours you get, what kind of equipment they use, any other special requirements they have.
2. Pricing for extras – if you want them to come early, or need an extra hour, or want to do engagement pictures (or boudoir photos, woo hoo!) , you should know how much that costs.
3. Training – where did they go to school and how did they get in to photography? “Taking photos of my sister’s kewpie doll collection to put up on Ebay” is NOT an appropriate answer here folks.
4. How long have they been in business – I’m not saying new photographers don’t deserve a chance. They’ve got to get a start somewhere. But at the same time, if your photography is very important to you, you might want to go with someone a little more seasoned.
5. Their favorite weddings to shoot/most challenging – how will they overcome any obstacles at your wedding? Is there one kind of style they favor heavily over others? If they couldn’t deal with stress factors at other weddings, chances are good they might flake at yours.
6. Pricing on prints – if the photography package is reasonably priced, will you end up getting raked over the coals after when you want prints for parents and grandparents.
7. Length of time after wedding till you have proofs: will they be at your doorstep in 2 weeks or will it be 4 months? Set your expectations now so you’re not hounding them for some teaser shots the day you come home from your honeymoon.
8. Can you buy the rights – I’m getting all of our photos on a flash drive after the wedding with the rights to take them any where I please. This option is getting more and more popular, so if you don’t see it, ask!
9. I can haz Facebook? Can you upload the photos you love to your website or social media sites?
10. Can you see a full wedding shoot? My photographer leaves some of her print ordering galleries open, so I was able to stalk them and see every single shot she took at a wedding, not just the best of the best that she wanted me to see. I got a much better idea of how she works and what we can expect at our wedding.

What other good tips do you have for choosing a photographer? If I get some good ones, I’ll keep expanding the list!

It might be a little early to start building a wedding website, but I don’t care!

There are a lot of free and paid websites you can choose, depending on your needs. The Knot, Brides.com, The Wedding Channel and I’m sure many many more sites offer wedding websites for you. Many are also free. The biggest thing for me was that I didn’t want a floofy pink page covered with hearts and roses and doves. Yuck.

After some debate, I signed up for a free trial of a NearlyWeds.com wedding website. If it’s good enough for Ariel at Offbeat Bride to endorse, it’s good enough for me to play with for 2 weeks, right? I found it to be almost dummy proof (THANK GOD) so far! It’s easy to add and remove sections, upload photos and tweak the text. I think I like it so much because it’s got a similar feel to editing and working on a blog.

I ended up picking the Butterfly Love template, as seen here:

Dreamy sigh. Purple and butterflies. How soon is too soon to do a wedding website? Did anyone else get really excited and start theirs early?

Did anyone else fall in love with Adele after watching her perform Chasing Pavements at the last Grammy awards? I sure did. This song is a bit melancholy. This version in particular – it’s a little slower and sadder than the version I downloaded. It’s still a very sweet song and I like it.

Oh. My. God. I love Polyvore.

Everyone seems to rely on their inspiration boards when conveying the style and feel of their wedding. They make them in photoshop or some other nonsensical program that I can’t use. I tried making one using another site, but after an hour of finding pictures and putting them into it’s uploader thinger, one slip of the mouse on the back button and all my hard work was gone.

I had seen Polyvore before but forgot to bookmark it. Finally, after some searching I opened an account this week and started throwing all my pictures and ideas into a board. The nice thing about Polyvore is that it’s free and very simple to use. The system will try to crop around the item in your picture so that you can overlay them in more interesting ways. It doesn’t always work (take the wedding dress in my board, for example) but you can turn it off if it mucks up the picture.

So without further ado, here’s my first stab at an inspiration board (click on it for an enlarged version):

This past Sunday, we headed over to FSIL’s house so we could hunker down in The Eagles Nest and watch Donovan McNabb get the crap kicked out of him

Despite that bad news, I’m thrilled to report we have our final bridesmaid! NEPA Groom’s sister loved her card and happily said yes. So we now have:

Bridesmaid E – a frequent (and sometimes sarcastic) commenter here at Nepa Bride Blog.

Bridesmaid L – you’ll find us about once a month out on a coffee date, dishing on the latest gossip found via the Facebook.

Bridesmaid M – my future sister in law.

Maid of Honor M – we’ve known each other since we were 5. That’s 20 years. Ridiculous.

This leaves us with one groomsman to officially be asked. If he ever actually picks up his phone, we’ll get that taken care of! I’m happy to be one step closer in this whole process. Step by step my friends.

I’m stuck with a bit of dilemma right now, and it has to do with these babies:

(source: Wedding Paper Divas)

(source: Wedding Paper Divas)

I’ve been agonizing over Save the Date styles and colors, even ordering samples of the 2 above (along with some invites) from WeddingPaperDivas.com. Then it occurred to me – do we even need Save the Dates?

Our wedding isn’t in a faraway land, the majority of our guests are local or already know about our plans, and we’re not going to be getting married close to a holiday. All those very good reasons for saving STDs (make your own joke this time, I’m pooped) don’t apply to us.

I also read something that made me stop and think: I’ll have to send an invitation to everyone that gets a Save the Date. I know, that sounds obvious but stay with me here. In my excitement, I’ll send out my STDs about 6 months before the wedding. Maybe some of those people will leave our office, or we’ll have a fight, or just grow apart… but they still expect an invitation to the wedding (except for the fighting. No fangz allowed at my wedding). More importantly, what if we need to slash our budget as we get closer to the big day? Of course, we don’t expect to, in fact I’m looking for ways to trim or save up extra money so we can include MORE of the people we want, since we do have to limit ourselves. We still have to prepare for the possibility of it up until we’re ready to send the actual invites. It’s much easier to cut the guest list when they haven’t already been ‘pre-invited’.

The pros to this debate are… um, I want purty papers? Ok, so there aren’t a lot. I could save a couple hundred bucks for something else in our wedding if I pass on Save the Dates. We probably will skip this, but it vexes me.

Did you have Save the Dates at your wedding? Why or why not?

I downloaded this song on a whim this week – I was looking at smoove mid 90’s R&B ballads (yes, think Boyz II Men) in an attempt to relive my middle school days. Itunes suggest this song and I remember liking it back in the day.

It’s a bit funky and fun, but traditional enough that it’s not going to throw anyone off kilter (like playing I’M ON A BOAT might, hehe).

I saw this on the fantastic Pantomime Papers blog and then ran my own blog through it. Wordle makes a happy chart with all the most prominent words on your blog, word doc, whatever.

Do I ever talk about anything actually useful? lol

This isn’t the start of a new regular column (but maybe it should be?!?!?) – I’ve just had a rough week and haven’t wanted to post or even be near a computer once I leave work for the day. Here are all the good things that happened this week, some wedding related and some not:

• A box full of pretty came from Sephora for me today.
• The DJ a co-worker recommended to me has already gotten in touch and sent me a sample DVD and price list.
• Some sample invitations I ordered from Wedding Paper Divas came this week. I think we have a winner, but you’ve gotta wait to find out!
• The NFL regular season starts tonight. Now I can’t wait for SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! to go watch our game at FSIL’s.
• Speaking of FSIL…. now that we’ve asked FBIL to be the best man, now we can ask her and her boyfriend to be in the wedding party! (we needed to wait, on the 1 in a million chance FBIL said no, lol)
• Tomorrow is Friday.
• It was 68 degrees outside today. That’s sweater weather! I *heart* sweater weather. Further confirming that getting married in the fall will be awesome.

What kind of things are you thankful for? Have you ever had to stop in the wedding planning process to remind yourself how good you have it?