The Knot sent me an email today. It said "Where are you getting married? We've pulled together everything you need to plan a wedding in your area: Hundreds of vendor profiles -- sites, photographers, florists, bands, and more" blah blah blah. Which would make you assume that from the oodles of information they collected from me when I registered for the site, they had some about things near me in Munich. Nah-uh. Just a link to their over-filled front page, with the list of everything for the U.S. C'est la vie.
But while we are on the topic, random impersonal emails from companies aren't the only ones I can get. You too can write to me: zeebride@gmail.com. Or if you prefer to deal with the male half, zeegroom@gmail.com. I'm going to make him able to post on the blog, so if you are very lucky, you might see a post from him one of these days...
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Rings and things
I've been thinking about wedding rings and wedding dresses the last few days. I'll share my thoughts on rings for this post.
As I mentioned before, at the moment, I don't have an engagement ring. I can live with this, but I do want a ring. I've never really thought about it much before. I don't wear rings normally, so a ring would become extra symbolic, as no matter what it is, it's a ring I'm going to always wear. Within reason though, I might take it off when mixing up hamburger meat with my hands. But always in the sense it's not going to be taken off just because it doesn't match my shoes.
I'm not so crazy about a big diamond solitaire for a lot of reasons.
1. Diamonds are overpriced. Diamonds aren't rare, they are extremely common. A market was artificially created for them by keeping tight control of how many got out to the public. This has eased in the last few years, but the grip of good marketing is still in effect.
2. There are too many blood diamonds out there. Countries like Sierre Leon, Liberia and Angola fund their civil wars by selling diamonds they mine in their countries. Lots of times the people that these rebel groups use to mine the diamonds are kept like slaves. Do I want to wear a stone that went to buy guns that went to kill innocent human beings? If I do get a diamond, we'll make sure it's a Canadian diamond or another diamond with a certificate of origin from somewhere peaceful.
3. Solitaires stick out. Occasionally I am not the most graceful of humans. With a big rock on my finger, I am likely to rip up sweaters, scratch glasses and leave injuries on my or G's head during what was supposed to be a tender moment.
So what would I like? Well, both G and I were talking about something with rubies, since Ruby is my middle name. Pearls possibly, since it's our birthstone too (and I can't scratch anyone's eyes out with a pearl). But basically, we're going to just go out shopping and see what we like. Don't know if we'll get something matching to work as wedding rings together, or two individual rings. If anyone has any suggestions, whether of what to buy or where to look or a style they think we should check out, I'd love to read your comments.
As I mentioned before, at the moment, I don't have an engagement ring. I can live with this, but I do want a ring. I've never really thought about it much before. I don't wear rings normally, so a ring would become extra symbolic, as no matter what it is, it's a ring I'm going to always wear. Within reason though, I might take it off when mixing up hamburger meat with my hands. But always in the sense it's not going to be taken off just because it doesn't match my shoes.
I'm not so crazy about a big diamond solitaire for a lot of reasons.
1. Diamonds are overpriced. Diamonds aren't rare, they are extremely common. A market was artificially created for them by keeping tight control of how many got out to the public. This has eased in the last few years, but the grip of good marketing is still in effect.
2. There are too many blood diamonds out there. Countries like Sierre Leon, Liberia and Angola fund their civil wars by selling diamonds they mine in their countries. Lots of times the people that these rebel groups use to mine the diamonds are kept like slaves. Do I want to wear a stone that went to buy guns that went to kill innocent human beings? If I do get a diamond, we'll make sure it's a Canadian diamond or another diamond with a certificate of origin from somewhere peaceful.
3. Solitaires stick out. Occasionally I am not the most graceful of humans. With a big rock on my finger, I am likely to rip up sweaters, scratch glasses and leave injuries on my or G's head during what was supposed to be a tender moment.
So what would I like? Well, both G and I were talking about something with rubies, since Ruby is my middle name. Pearls possibly, since it's our birthstone too (and I can't scratch anyone's eyes out with a pearl). But basically, we're going to just go out shopping and see what we like. Don't know if we'll get something matching to work as wedding rings together, or two individual rings. If anyone has any suggestions, whether of what to buy or where to look or a style they think we should check out, I'd love to read your comments.
Monday, January 24, 2005
Website review - The Knot
Really, this place should be called Zee Knot, in deference to me, but I guess I will just have to live with the snub.
theknot.com
Nice clean front page, with lots of information listed. The unfortunate thing is, you have to register to use any of this information. Registration is of course free, but I was forced to give a lot of personal information before registration was complete. It also forced me to pick a state/province, which is silly, as "Bavaria" wasn't listed as an option. Okay, now having gone back to see the page, I see they have an option of "Not applicable", but tucked down within the other Ns, rather than somewhere easy to spot.
Because there is so much information, it would be good if they had an obvious newbie's guide to take you on a tour of the webpage, to see what's available.
On my own, exploring leads me to the link for local resources. Hmmm. No Germany (no suprise), so let's see what they have for Canada. Canadian resources are limited the Toronto area. Is this because they have only started the Canadian section, or is because they really think that people will go to Toronto for their reception from Vancouver or St. John? Either way, it hardly encourages more Canadian viewers to check it out. A whole potential market and new advertisers basically left out in the cold.
But the site is not completely useless if you are not from the States. Some of the good things they have are some very nifty looking and useful tools. Included in this are a checklist for the wedding, a tool for planning your budget, a guest list which also then corresponds to the invitation list and to the gift list. At first glance, what I like most is the budget planner because it includes so much which you might otherwise forget and helps to distribute everything appropriately. You can take out things that aren't applicable and include other things that they don't. Very practical and useful.
I have to say, I did experience a micro-second of panic when I clicked on one of these pages for the first time. Because you have to enter a date for the wedding, I picked a random date in January next year. So when I went onto the checklist, there it was in big letters, "Only 350 days left!" I think it was the exclamation point which scared me the most. But it's also the first time I started thinking about a wedding date being a deadline. Eeek.
There are other nice features of the webpage which I haven't had a chance to explore yet, so I'll review them more after I've had a chance to play with them.
theknot.com
Nice clean front page, with lots of information listed. The unfortunate thing is, you have to register to use any of this information. Registration is of course free, but I was forced to give a lot of personal information before registration was complete. It also forced me to pick a state/province, which is silly, as "Bavaria" wasn't listed as an option. Okay, now having gone back to see the page, I see they have an option of "Not applicable", but tucked down within the other Ns, rather than somewhere easy to spot.
Because there is so much information, it would be good if they had an obvious newbie's guide to take you on a tour of the webpage, to see what's available.
On my own, exploring leads me to the link for local resources. Hmmm. No Germany (no suprise), so let's see what they have for Canada. Canadian resources are limited the Toronto area. Is this because they have only started the Canadian section, or is because they really think that people will go to Toronto for their reception from Vancouver or St. John? Either way, it hardly encourages more Canadian viewers to check it out. A whole potential market and new advertisers basically left out in the cold.
But the site is not completely useless if you are not from the States. Some of the good things they have are some very nifty looking and useful tools. Included in this are a checklist for the wedding, a tool for planning your budget, a guest list which also then corresponds to the invitation list and to the gift list. At first glance, what I like most is the budget planner because it includes so much which you might otherwise forget and helps to distribute everything appropriately. You can take out things that aren't applicable and include other things that they don't. Very practical and useful.
I have to say, I did experience a micro-second of panic when I clicked on one of these pages for the first time. Because you have to enter a date for the wedding, I picked a random date in January next year. So when I went onto the checklist, there it was in big letters, "Only 350 days left!" I think it was the exclamation point which scared me the most. But it's also the first time I started thinking about a wedding date being a deadline. Eeek.
There are other nice features of the webpage which I haven't had a chance to explore yet, so I'll review them more after I've had a chance to play with them.
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Shameless publicity
In an attempt to become rich and famous, (hah!) I have submitted my blog to a few blog search engines. blogwise.com was good enough to include me in their list, so here is their reciprocal publicity. Thanks Blogwise! I won't forget you little people when I reach the top!
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