Where to get your dresses

Now I'm not saying that you need to buy a dress special for this particular occasion; all's I'm saying is, if you ever need an adorable, perfectly-made retro-chic dress for a reasonable price, I would highly recommend Jiminie Hayward of My Little Black Dress. The bridesmaids' dresses she did for us just came in the mail today, and they are truly gorgeous. Jiminie does impeccable work and is very open to altering designs and switching things around to fit your needs. 223 positive reviews on Etsy can't be wrong.

Last Names

A quick note, having had a recently married friend who ran into this problem.

Ursula is not taking Nick's last name. Nor are we going to merge our two last names into one. (Ed: nor, may I note in the interests of completeness, is Nick taking Ursula's last name.) Cash gifts sent by cheque should be made out to "Ursula O & Nick B.", but using their current last names.

Note: mostly, this post is an excuse to use the word "cheque" and sound a little pauncy.

Charity Registry Update

For those who wish to make a charitable donation in lieu of gifts, if neither Habitat for Humanity nor the Lambda Legal Foundation are your cup of tea, we've added Doctors Without Borders to our charity registry.

It Don't Make No Money Don't Make No Sense / We're Gonna Invite the Prez-o-Dent

Here's a neat tip for any soon-to-be-newlyweds out there: send an invite to the President! If you do, you'll get a nice card back congratulating you.

Here are instructions on how to invite the President to your wedding. The White House will also respond to a number of other events, including the birth of a child, retirement after working at the same company for thirty years or more, a fiftieth wedding anniversary, etc.

British citizens can invite the Queen of England (but address the letter to the Secretary, not the Queen herself!); members of the Catholic church can invite the Pope; and anyone can invite Oprah. Or Mickey Mouse. Invitations sent to a musician's or actor's fan club can also result in a letter. Who knows, maybe one of them might even show up!

(Here's the song that inspired the title for this post, That Handsome Devil's "Rob the Prez-o-dent":)

"... and family"

Family members this size are also invited, even if the invite forgot to mention it.

Whoops!

We triple-checked our invitations, and while we did several reprints to try to get all the information just right, it appears we may have missed a few things. In particular, some invitations don't have "and family" printed on the invitation. This is a kid-friendly wedding; any and all children living with you are welcome to attend. The reception hall has plenty of space in the restrooms and changing rooms for diaper changing and/or letting the little ones have a quieter moment. If you don't see your child's name when you RSVP, please email us at info@beaudrowen.com so we have a proper seat for everyone.

Please note that at present we are at the limit of our reception hall's seating capacity, so we do not have space to seat your teenage son/daughter/stepson's date.

(cc photo by Flickr user Jon Ovington)

Save The Date!

Hello there! You may be visiting this website because we sent you a save-the-date in the mail. This is your one-stop shop for information on Nick & Ursula's wedding.

• Out-of-towners can go ahead and make hotel reservations. For air travel there's always Orbitzor Kayak.
• If you want to get regular updates from our wedding website, you can subscribe to our RSS feed. This link has all updates to the website. If you're not interested in our random musings about wedding planning, DIY updates, etc., this link will only send you the updates with information directly relevant to wedding guests.
• For wedding junkies, our collection of links under "Useful Wedding Links" (to the right of this post) features lots of wedding resources that are some combination of pretty and amusing. Warning: Regretsy is hilarious, but occasionally Not Safe For Work.

Do you have any questions about the wedding, visiting Seattle, or anything else? Send us email at  info@beaudrowen.com!

The Present, as Envisioned by The Past, When The Present Was Still The Future

Since our wedding has a vintage tinge to it, I thought I'd share one of the most fascinating write-ups of what people living in 1900 thought the world would look like in the year 2000. You may have seen it before. The article is called "What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years" and appeared in The Ladies Home Journal in 1900. Since Nick works for Amazon, this one is particularly hilarious:

Prediction #22 Store Purchases by Tube. Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distances, perhaps for hundreds of miles. They will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy; then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch post-offices of today, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house.

They almost got it right. Trucks still deliver goods to your home, but you make the purchase via the Internet, which some people think of as a series of tubes:



Update: even more apropos, here's an artist's conception of what Seattle would look like in 2014, as drawn in 1914.