One of the aspects of the wedding weekend that I'm really excited about and not at all stressed about is the rehearsal dinner. It is being hosted by the future in-laws and...is already totally planned! Done. Yay! When Matt and I first started talking about doing the Austin wedding, we talked about trying to work in as many of our favorite places as possible. One stand out choice was Guero's Taco Bar. Guero's is a landmark in Austin. It's a favorite of President Clinton--who purportedly loves the El Presidente plate and they swear he eats the whole thing. It's also been in a couple of movies, most recently in Tarantino's Grindhouse. It's just a great taco bar (with free salsa bar!) and a great place to relax. It also features live music and is within walking distance to our hotel. So perfect right?
Unfortunately, when we looked at their website they specifically said, no rehearsal dinners. Really. Literally spelled it out. So we were super bummed and started looking into a replacement. I put out a Facebook message to all my Austin peeps asking for a recommendation and a former teacher of mine from UT replied. He had some feedback on other places, but also said he's old friends with the manager from Guero's! He said he'd see what he could and....wait for it...he actually did it! He emailed me the next day to say that the manager was willing to work with us! It took a bit longer to get the manager on the horn b/c he was vacationing, but he told us that as long as we didn't do it too late, he could seat our whole party together and we could hang on the patio and listen to free live music while we wait.
So that's done! The place already has a great decor, so no worries on that. The menu is already set. So that's done. I guess I could make rehearsal dinner invites if I have time, but that's it. So yay! Check it off the list and get hungry for some tacos!
The patio and live music venue.
The front porch.
Tarantino filming Grindhouse.
Showing posts with label events. Show all posts
Showing posts with label events. Show all posts
Monday, March 30, 2009
The Rehearsal Dinner
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Pingg without the Pong
I just found a new email invite service that I LOVE. Pingg.com is such an awesome service. There you can create email invites using images from professional artists, photographers and event stylists like Martha Stewart. Or you can upload your own image to make a custom invite. Almost all the designs are free (custom designs are always free) and the emails take you to a customized web page that manages all your rsvp's. You can also add pictures from your desktop or from a flickr feed, videos from youtube, links from anywhere and there's a message center for guests to mention how excited they are to come. (or how sad they are they can't come.) The designs are organized by theme such as baby shower, wedding, bachelorette party, March Madness, birthday, girl's night out, etc. But probably the coolest part of the service is all the ways they can contact people for you. Obviously they can reach people through email. But they'll also post a shareable invite on Facebook, Myspace or about a dozen other social networking sites. And they'll text message your guests...for free! Yup, they'll text for the first invite, to remind slackers to rsvp and to get people excited the day of. And they'll send an email thank you to everyone who rsvp's yes the day after the event. So civilized!
Here are some of my favorite free designs.
But what really, really sold me on Pingg and the reason I went with them for my sister's bachelorette party and bridal shower (2 events, not a weird combo), is that they will print, address and mail real invites for you too! Yes, they really do everything. Now, you do have to pay for the print versions and right now they only come in a postcard version, but at $1.25 each where you don't have to do anything but put in the info, not bad! And if you type in "print20" at checkout, you get an extra 20% off printing.
Anyway, here is a look at the custom Pingg invite I designed for my sister's bridal shower.
All the info will be printed on the back and has already been mailed out to our peeps. And here's the accompanying web site:
http://www.pingg.com/rsvp/mzynt4d45b84qcjdk
So what do you think? Will any of you be using Pingg soon?
Monday, March 9, 2009
The Venue
As soon as we got engaged, everyone wanted to know where we were getting married. And it was a good question. We live in New York but I grew up in Arkansas and Matt grew up in Illinois. Obviously no matter where we got married, it would be a destination wedding for almost every guest. So we picked a city that's fun to mini-vacation, affordable and driving distance for many. Austin, TX. It's also where we met while going to grad school so we know it pretty well. Then we got pretty excited about an Austin wedding b/c it was the perfect chance to show off one of our favorite cities to our friends.
The next question was more specifically where. After researching, contacting and pricing out literally every venue in Austin, TX, we settled on Mercury Hall as our venue. The decision was based on the following factors:
1) It's pretty.
2) It allows for an outdoor ceremony--a prereq
3) It allows for an indoor ceremony if it rains
4) It allows for an air conditioned reception.
5) It's not too far from downtown.
6) They let you bring in your own vendors. Even if you want to cater yourself.
7) It's one of the most affordable venues in Austin.
Also, we think the history of Mercury Hall is pretty cool. It was built in 1904 in Mercury, Texas. The 105 year-old Texas church was moved to Austin in 1997 to be used in the Richard Linklater film, Waking Life and has since been restored as a beautiful event hall. The hall itself has a beautiful, vintage feel with hardwood floors, white washed walls and stain glass windows. I also love that we're getting married outside and then having the reception in a church. B/c it's fun to be backwards. Here are some pics of Mercury Hall.
(the 4 acre lawn where we will be married)
(through the glass entrance of the hall)
(the main reception room)
(Inside the hall)
(roses growing on the hall)
(an evening wedding at Mercury Hall)
(hopefully this will be me at my wedding)
So that's it. My big question now is how to design that big white space into a reception. Anybody got any ideas?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
