Preemptive post

Nikki here. I've put a note on my calendar to try to post something every 2 weeks, lest MMH start accusing me of being a slacker. I'm not sure anyone else is reading these, but Michelle is a dedicated fan.

Things have been fairly slow lately, relative to the pace of things when we first started planning. I'm in midst of cake tasting, which is really my vindication upon the entire wedding industry. Cyndi and I are checking out every baker in town, scarfing up all kinds of yummy free food. Although there's not much to enjoy about the wedding planning process, I do give this two thumbs up.

The invitations arrived today, which I'm super psyched about. They look great (says the co-designer oh so humbly) and were the first time this all felt real. I think it's having something tangible... I don't know. All I know is that today was that day when I actually said "Oh, my God- I'm getting MARRIED!" and felt more excited than crazy. I thought that was a good sign.

Steve's awesome. Steve told me to say that. Back to me...

Invites are starting to go out for pre-wedding festivities, to help fill in the time between holiday parties and the wedding itself. (This really is the greatest timing ever... It's like 3 solid months of fun.) My future sister-in-law Meg sent out beautiful invites for my bridal shower with Steve's family in Cincinnati; she's gone way above and beyond in planning this and I can't wait to celebrate with all the Patricks and Deifels and assorted Ohio family. On the home front, Worth and Adrienne have been sneaking around making plans for the bachlorette party in mid-January. After much admonishment from Adrienne, I'm learning to quit worrying about it and let them plan the party. It's not easy when you've been "Mommy Nikki" as long as I have... =)

That's all the wedding haps. Non-wedding time has been spent at various holiday parties and shopping for friends and family, a trend that will continue to play out for the next couple of weeks. I'm excited to have Alanta back stateside in a few weeks from her tour in Germany- Check out what she's been up to with an article here. Speaking of flying, I'm spending Friday night on a roundtrip jaunt to LA, garnering me the 3000 extra Delta miles I needed to get gold status for next year. A traveler's gotta make the most of those miles!

I think it's time to wrap this up- I'm all out of funny and it's time to cook dinner. Have a good one and I hope to see you all soon!! -Nikki

Putting the leap in Leap Day.

Hey everybody. Steve here. As I said in my post yesterday, sorry for not blogging as often as I probably should. Today it occurred to me that there is something I'd like to share with all of you before you arrive at our reception in March. And we're really excited about it.

As most of you know, our wedding ceremony proper will be a very intimate gathering of our parents, grandparents and siblings on February 29th, the day before everyone gathers at our reception on March 1st. That's right. We're getting married on Leap Day, which means an anniversary once every four years. We're going to be newlyweds for a loooong time. Sweet.

In thinking about ways to commemorate our Leap Day wedding, I remembered reading an article online a year ago that stuck with me about a celebrity photographer in the 50s and 60s named Philippe Halsman. In addition to working with the surrealist painter Salvador Dali, he often did a lot work for the most popular magazines of the day, i.e. Life, Look, etc. He took an amazing photograph of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis that I actually had in postcard form as a teenager when I was dreaming of working in comedy someday.

But I digress.

Whenever Halsman would photograph any of his subjects, be they entertainers, political figures, scientists, anyone at all... he would ask them for one final picture at the end of each session. He would ask for a jump picture.

A jump picture is basically what is sounds like: Halsman would ask his subjects to jump in the air, as high or as low as they were physically able, and he would capture that moment in time when they seemed to be defying gravity.

I mentioned this to Nikki and thought it would be appropriate to get at least one picture in this style of the two of us when we finally got around to hiring a photographer. She happily agreed, and we mentally filed that away for future use.

Cut to a few weeks later when we started plowing through all of the details it seems you need when planning a wedding and reception. When we were reminded of needing a guest book for our reception guests, Nikki began to reflect on how successful these had been at other weddings she'd attended. More often then not, we agreed, these books were less comprehensive than one would hope for, and generally had the feeling of a ledger that would get placed on a shelf to sit for years. This seemed like an opportunity that was ripe for innovation.

And then... then Nikki said something that is totally illustrative of why I want to marry this woman in the first place. It was at this point Nikki said to me "what about your jump picture idea?"

That was it. I could have kissed her on the lips. And I probably did. I do that as often as I can.

After grilling a bunch of Atlanta photographers on how we might achieve this, we had a wonderful meeting with photographer Kristi Odom, an old GT classmate of Nikki's who was just as enthusiastic as we were about the idea. Her enthusiasm and the quality of her samples made hiring Kristi a very easy decision.

So here's what we're going to do:

When everyone first arrives to the reception on Saturday night, Kristi will have set up a well-lit white backdrop that spills forward onto the floor. As guests enter, Kristi will ask everyone to sign a simple piece of white paper before heading to the white backdrop to jump for their picture, either by themselves, as a part of a couple, or in a family group shot.

Now this is very important, and I want everyone to understand where we're coming from: Nikki and I both know that we're lucky enough to have guests coming to our reception of all ages, sizes, and mobilities. We're not going to ask anyone to jump who isn't physically able to do so. It's not a contest by any stretch of the imagination. We'd rather have your picture not jumping than to have you skip getting photographed. We're just hoping everyone can get in the spirit of what we're asking for. It's going to take 30 seconds and it won't hurt a bit. Promise.

After all of the photographs are taken and processed, Kristi is going to compose everyone's photograph with the signatures on the white paper into a hard-bound coffee table book for us, a collection of our guests on that special day taking the leap after we've taken the biggest of our lives. This is going to be our guest book, our collection of our family and friends intermingled, and I'm positive we're going to enjoy looking through it often over the years.

There. This is the kind of blog post I envisioned writing when we set up this thing. I'll try to be better about updating it as much as Nikki does.

Incidentally, if you'd like to read more about Philippe Halsman, the inspiration for this whole idea, here's the link to the Smithsonian.com article I read originally (be sure to click on the link for "more pictures" when you get there).

Hope all of you are well, and drop me a line if you want further clarification on what we're doing here.

-S

Going on record here.

Hello all. This is Steve. Want to apologize for not doing my part in posting here with any regularity, and to say that Nikki is so blogtastic it's ridiculous.

I'm a lucky man.

In the meantime, let me post the postcard that we're hoping most of you received in the mail and didn't throw out thinking it was a shoe ad.



-S

Half way there...

Another 3 weeks have gone by since the last post and I just realized we're half way between the engagement and the wedding. Craziness. Luckily, I think we're in a good spot so far as planning goes, so hopefully we can coast on in for the big days in February and March. Short list of what's checked off the list so far: venues, caterer, photography, honeymoon plans, dresses (for me- Steve can't find one that looks good with his hips), and selecting invites and favors (still need to be ordered). Gracious friends and family have started working on bachelor/bachlorette party plans and showers, so the new year should be full of festivities!

Speaking of festivities, while Steve's parents enjoyed "LOVE" (the Beetles show) in Las Vegas, Steve and I spent a fun Thanksgiving with my parents and Dalton family. DJ went to Germany to surprise Alanta for the holiday, so all the brothers were again MIA. Rumor has it that Jimmy made a mean dinner in Germany and should start cooking for the whole family when his tour is over. I have work holiday parties at a rate of 1 per week between now and Christmas and we'll celebrate the holidays with the CN gang as well. Our time off will be divided into pre-Christmas with my family (all jetting off to spend Christmas day with Carlie and Caleb) and Christmas Eve on with Steve's in Ohio.

In other news, Steve's staying busy working on his house and is threatening to get a bigger storage unit to hold all of his "stuff". I call it "stuff" because Steve made me stop referring to it as "his crap". =) Steve's also getting ready to start working on fixing the Mercedes and Volvo up to sell- we now measure selling price in wedding units (i.e., "I think I can sell it for the photographer and 5 dinners." or "The Mercedes is worth about 2 tickets to Tahiti.") Most of the shorts he's been working on for the past year at work have wrapped up, so be on the lookout for those online and on TV and on your phone and anywhere else CN decides to put them!

As for me, most of my life is spent working on wedding stuff, traveling, or rock climbing. My schedule through the end of the year: I'm up in Richmond/DC this week, home/Boston next week, home the following week, Richmond/DC the next week, and then the Christmas travels begin to Dalton, Danville (KY), Cincinnati, and Columbus (OH).

I think that's it from Stikki! I'm sure Steve will correct or add on anything I've forgotten. Here's hoping your holiday season is merry and your gifts all purchased on sale! ;-) Nikki

Crazy caterers...

Apparently MMH is going to start making demands if I don't write something every week and a half, so Steve and I are going to have to step up our game... =)

The two weeks have been relatively slow. We watched GT get slaughtered by the other Tech (worse than I expected, although I coped better than Steve expected) and went to a "They Might Be Giants" concert, which was just as good as Steve expected and not nearly as painful as I expected. Happy mediums.

We also celebrated our first anniversary with a relaxing weekend up in the mountains in a cabin that had (I kid you not) a heart-shaped Jacuzzi. Photos will come later when I'm back in Atlanta, in case you don't believe me. Despite my sincere hoping, we did not see the black bear that was rumored to be lurking in our area of the woods, although apparently everyone else returning keys did. Bummer. I tried to convince Steve to leave some of our dinner on the back porch, but he decided to eat it instead. Either he's just not adventurous or it was the best dinner on a grill ever- Although the latter is true, I still think the former played a part. ;-)

Anyhow, on to the stories and justifying the title of this post. Steve and I thought we'd settled on our caterer for the reception and were happy to have that behind us. After sending "sorry but we're not going to use you" notes to the others, I received a response from one asking for a chance to counter the offer we're taking. Sure, why not. So I forward this caterer (who shall be known as CC2, symbolic of being the 2nd crazy caterer we've encountered in this process) the proposal that we're planning on signing (from a company I'll call DE, symbolic of the fact that those are the company initials- clever, huh?). Let the crazy commence...

CC2 proceeds to call me while I'm working in DC to tell me that she's composed a two page email telling me what's wrong with the DE proposal, but would rather talk over the phone to help guide me through this minefield that I've gotten myself into. After I call back after hours and tell her I have better things to do, she emails me her story of fear and woe about how DE's proposal reflects significant understaffing for my event and how their parent company has filed for bankruptcy and how they'll give me bad food and steal my money and blah blah blah. I, like any good bride-to-be, immediately panic that I'm going to have 200 people for dinner and no food.

To make a long story somewhat shorter, I called in a third caterer's opinion without revealing any names about who spilled the beans. She immediately identifies who CC2 works for and tells me they're notorious for doing stuff like this. Apparently they like to scare up business during the slow months by scaring accounts out of using their opponents. Having heard this, along with DE explanation of the filing, I've decided to stick with my original contract and ignore everything CC2 ever said. This only firms up my opinion that everyone in the wedding industry is crazy and in it to make me crazy too.

Upcoming events and things to do, in no particular order:
-GT plays Duke on Saturday
-Steve's friend Kevin is getting married on Saturday night and Janet Donnell is getting married on Saturday as well; we wish them both all the best!
-Mom's birthday is Saturday, so we're up in Dalton Sunday to celebrate
-my reception dress came in, so I'll see if I like it as much in real life as I did a month ago
-we have invitations we like so, barring finding them cheaper or changing our minds, we'll hopefully order those in the next few weeks
-we have a meeting Tuesday with a photographer, a friend-of-a-friend from college
-in the next 5 weeks, we have a movie premiere, Thanksgiving, and office holiday parties in DC, Boston, and Atlanta

Crazy times! Until the next time I'm really bored in the office, this is Nikki, signing off.

And they're off!

Save the dates went out on Monday, so yours should be appearing in a mailbox near you soon. This is probably irrelevent, since most people won't know about the blog until their save the dates arrive, but I thought we should share this milestone anyhow. It's another thing to check off the (never ending) list.

We've already heard that some people are getting theirs in all kinds of shape- smeared, crumpled, etc. Apologies if yours isn't pretty when it gets there; we're not sure what we did to make the USPS mad, but apparently they're not loving us. No worries- We have an extra 150 or so, enough to replace any that are no longer suitable for framing (standard 4x6 frame- just ask Steve).

Registry note

Just an FYI- We just found out Macy's will donate a percentage of all online registry purchases to the charity of our choice. We've chosen the American Heart Association as our cause; in order to ensure the donation goes through, simply use www.weddingchannel.com to check out our Macy's registry.

Here's a quick link to find us: Click here.

No pressure to buy us anything, but if you choose to, might as well do a good deed in the process! =) -Steve & Nikki

Making progress...

Hello all! Nikki here, making my first post on the Team Stikki blog. Be kind. ;-)

Apologies to those who feel like they've been left out of details for the past month and a half since there was a new posting. Clearly you haven't had the opportunity to hang out with either of us, since we're pretty much discussing wedding stuff 24-7 these days, no matter how hard we (or at least I- Steve does it just to drive me crazy) try. Having said that, here's the news:

We've selected venues and are in the process of signing contracts and getting people paid. The reception will be at the Fabulous Fox Theatre in one of their ballrooms. This is cool for a variety of reasons, including the fact that I usher there, it's only a few blocks from my condo, it's an Atlanta icon, and (for a small fee) they'll put our message as a scrolling marquee item. Fantastic!

The wedding venue we've selected is the Renaissance Atlanta Hotel Downtown, which has rooms on the 25th floor with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking midtown, Tech, Turner, and downtown. It's the perfect place for our small ceremony and dinner with family.

Save the dates will go out soon, officially announcing this site and dates (for those who aren't insiders). ;-) Steve designed a fantastically clever and "us" announcement, so be on the lookout. They should arrive in mailboxes sometime around Halloween, once we get through all that addressing work.

The registries are a work in progress, but are up for people to check out: Most of our practical stuff is at Macy's and we've started beefing up our library at Amazon.com. We're still taking suggestions for books that should definitely be a part of our collection or items we've forgotten about.

What else... We've narrowed the caterers down to a handful and are doing tastings to decide who'll we sign. We've got some ideas for dresses for me, wedding favors we love, and honeymoon plans. We're thinking Tahiti- you can't go wrong with the South Pacific, right? Steve has made incredible progress at his house, moving "our retirement" collections into storage and trashing mountains of stuff that has collected over the years; we hope to get some minor work done and have it ready to put on the market between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Things still on our to do list include invites, photographers, DJs, and cakes- Feel free to comment with any suggestions you've got in those areas.

In life outside wedding planning (if such a thing exists right now), I've been kept busy with a very mediocre GT football season, getting back into rock climbing with friends, my 10 year high school reunion last weekend, and the usual travel for work and fun. I leave on Friday for a week in Europe- seeing my brother Chris, meeting my new niece Carlie, playing with my nephew Caleb, and jetting my sister-in-law off for a few days in Prague and Vienna without any of them in hopes of preserving her sanity. =) Steve stays busy with work, trying to finish up the series of shorts that just won't die. He did take time out of his busy schedule to roadtrip with Kohler up to Ohio for a Genesis reunion tour stop- Those who live in Atlanta will likely notice the new hoodie that has been added to the collection.

I think that's it for now. My brain's empty. =) A lot of stuff, but it's been a busy 6 weeks since the last post. You're all caught up!

One week down.

Hey everybody. It was a pretty productive week here for the most part.

The wedding spreadsheet Nikki created last Sunday night is beginning to fill up with important information, including guest addresses, potential ceremony and reception locations, photographers and the like. We evidently want to get save the date cards out sooner rather than later, so gathering this information and having it centrally located in one document is very, very important.

Steve is learning a lot, has more common sense in this situation than you'd think he'd have, and is looking forward to only doing this once in his life.

He's also dead serious about the third person thing from the first blog entry here. You bet he is.

This weekend is going to be a lot about Nikki and her mom training for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer they're doing in LA the weekend of Sept. 15-16. If you haven't heard about this or have forgotten, there's still time to help. Just click on or copy this link into your browser:

http://info.avonfoundation.org/site/TR?px=1271383&pg=personal&fr_id=1284&et=LxwgePNSljxLTWqovjghNg..&s_tafId=6160

That's all from us here at Team Stikki.

Hope everyone has a good weekend.

-S

But that's not all...

Nikki is a very smart lady.

Steve posted the pictures you see below yesterday to give everyone a taste of some visuals from this past weekend. Today Nikki made the suggestion that everyone might actually enjoy seeing the entire series of pictures from our engagement weekend, and that it might be wise to post the link to that online library here at Stikki Wedding Central.

See? She's a very smart lady.

If you'd like to see more, click on "But that's not all" above.

More news soon...

-S

Stikki & Bling

Here we go...

At approximately 9:30 pm on Saturday, August 18th, 2007 Steve Patrick asked Nikki Cross to marry him.

She said yes.

Well today's Monday, Nikki has already created a spreadsheet to start planning their wedding, and responding technologically in kind Steve has set up this blog.

Steve will be speaking in the third person when Steve writes here. If Nikki posts here Steve doesn't know what tense she'll use. Probably tight shoulders with a dull headache.

See what Steve did there? He made a "tense" joke with words. Expect a lot of those here.

Pics of this weekend posted soon.

-S