Somehow during this winter and springtime we lost sense of time, it seemed that the wedding is sooo far away and we were enjoying looking at the different ideas, contemplating what would be nice to have for the wedding. The thing is that we absolutely forgot that the date is set and it’s time to actually start planning the wedding.

Now that we are finally in the active planning stage (well, according to a bridal planner, guide we’re running approximately half a year behind :) here are some updates:

We finally settled on the catering company and chose a whole bunch of super yummy stuff for the wedding!

And here’s the inspiration for the wedding theme:

(Yes, I’m a chocoholic and no, the wedding theme is not about chocolate :)

We are super excited about both the “Save the Dates” and our Invitations. They just got sent out a couple of days ago and I cannot wait to be able to share them on the blog :)

We are still looking for: an amazing DJ, alterations, and Wine Country based florists and make-up artists. All recommendations are welcome!

Have a great 4th of July weekend, everybody!

Natasha

Here is the resulting article (click on the picture to read it on SF Gate):

Everybody has heard about the dress shopping experience being a lot of fun, but it’s also a lot of work. After visiting two bridal stores and trying on about thirty dresses we were exhausted. There were a few dresses we kind of liked, but nothing that really stood out. I still didn’t know what I want, but knew exactly what I don’t want – nothing too puffy, no crystals, no beads. I knew that if it’s hard for me to move in the dress, it was not for me. I wanted something simple, earthy, organic and flowwy. I found a few of those in the magazines, but to my dismay none of them looked good on me.

Can you tell we were tired? :)

Last week I made another round of appointments, this time in San Francisco. Again, we found a few dresses that we liked and at the end of the day we walked into a small bridal salon in North Beach. Soon, we realized that there was nothing really to look at, nothing that I would be excited to try, but just because it took us a while to find the salon, I decided to at least try something on. It was here that one of the dresses on the racks suddenly caught my eye. The dress was nothing like what we looked at before, but for some reason I felt the urge to give it a try anyway.

No, I didn’t have a “That’s the One!” moment when I put it on and I didn’t get all teary eyed. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I liked it when I came out of the fitting room. But the more I looked at myself in the mirror, the more I realized that the dress is just perfect and I can totally picture myself wearing it for the wedding.

Well, the next morning I came back for my perfect wedding dress :)

Here are five tips that helped me find the dress:

1. Right after you get engaged and before you make your mind up on a wedding dress style, go to the largest bridal salon in your area. Try to have an open mind and try on a variety of wedding gowns, don’t eliminate anything at first glance. Even though certain styles work best on certain body types, don’t let the “rules” narrow your search too much. And if the salesperson brings you something she says you must try — try it, even if you don’t like the way it looks on the hanger.

Now that you know the basic style of the wedding dress that suits you, you can search the Internet and bridal magazines comparing fabrics and subtle design changes that may look even better. Make notes, tear off magazine pages you liked, and bring them to your next wedding gown appointments. Try not to get too attached to a wedding dress that looks great on paper, there’s always a chance that you won’t like it in person.

2. Start looking for your wedding dress at least nine months before the wedding day, because the whole style of the wedding should match the style of the bride’s dress. If you’ll fall in love with a vintage wedding dress, your whole wedding will have to reflect that :) Also, it takes about six months for your wedding dress to arrive from the manufacturer and for it to be properly fitted.

3. For your own sanity, bring along only a couple of very important to you people, maybe your mom and a supportive friend with great taste. Three or more people are going to be offering a ton of conflicting opinions and it’s going to create unnecessary drama. Advice is important, but you should remember that it’s your wedding day after all and to listen to your instincts; if you have to be reassured that the dress looks great on you, it’s probably not the one. Can you really see yourself walking down the aisle in this gown? If not, take it off and try another one on.

4. Dress shopping should be fun. Don’t overwhelm yourself with too much in one day, if every wedding dress is starting to look the same, call it a day.

5. Your perfect wedding dress is the one you don’t want to take off. It sticks out in your mind and you find yourself comparing all the others to it, you feel accomplished and excited when you go home.
But even after you think you’ve found your wedding gown, take a day, sleep on it and come back to the salon the next day. You want to be absolutely sure it’s the one for you: since bridal gowns are custom-made, they are absolutely non-returnable.

Hope that helps and good luck!

I’ll start with the most important part… drum roll please… the date of the wedding is….. 9/10/10! We are inviting just 30 people to the wedding and our hopes are that these people won’t mind taking the Friday off as it will allow all of us to spend the rest of the weekend relaxing.

The venue update is next: we absolutely fell in love with both the Ranch from our last blog post and also with the cute villa. It was a tough choice and we had to make a long list of pluses and minuses of both places. At the end we decided to go with the villa! Although both places are absolutely gorgeous, we felt that this venue would be a better match for our tiny wedding.

And lastly, the part everyone has been asking about ever since we got engaged… the photographer! This was honestly the toughest choice we’ve had to make. The challenge was that we both knew what style and type of photographer we wanted and we were absolutely not willing to compromise on it. Fortunately, we wanted more or less the same thing, otherwise we’d have to hire one photographer for the bride and one for the groom :)

We started our search by looking at Bay Area photographers, then at ones in Southern California. What we found is that although there are a ton of absolutely amazing artists in this state whom we adore and even sometimes idolize, their styles were a little different than what we had in mind. So our search circle got bigger and bigger, and we started looking at East Coast and even some Canadian photographers, until we finally found someone whose work we both absolutely admire:

We first learned of Greg Gibson a few years back at one of the photography conventions we attended. I remember that even then we were amazed at his strong photojournalistic approach and constant search for ways to tell the story. We were both beyond happy when he agreed to come out to Napa for our wedding!

Next on the list is the dress shopping and I’ll let you all know how that will go. Until then, have a great week everybody and stay dry in these upcoming storms!

Natasha

First on our list was a vineyard with a beautiful villa we could rent for a few days. This place seemed to have everything – beautiful landscaping and views, a pool, an outside fireplace and even a jacuzzi! What I liked the most is that for those few days the whole place is going to be ours and we won’t have to obey any stupid rules some other venues seem to have! Oh and one more good thing – the majority of the wedding would be on the cobblestone so I would be able to wear the high heels I was dreaming of :)

We had another private villa on our list that morning. The lady was a bit secretive and didn’t want to give us the address of the place; instead, she asked to meet us at BR Cohn Winery so we would follow her to the house. Why? After seeing the place we’d know the address anyway right? After 15 minutes of following her SUV up a super windy road we saw the house on the top of the hill. As promised, the view from there was just breathtaking – we could see the entire Sonoma Valley from there!

We didn’t like the house itself as it was way too tiny even for our size wedding and way too overpriced, but I absolutely fell in love with this bathroom in the bridal suite:

I had a few giggles imagining how many drunk grooms had to sleep on the floor after not being able to climb this Everest of a bed :)

We had some time before our next appointment so we decided to stop for lunch at Caffe Citti. I would really recommend to check out this place when you’re in the Sonoma area! We had the best prosciutto sandwiches ever!

Unfortunately, the food in the cafe was so good that we just couldn’t stop and arrived to our next appointment, which was supposed to be a food tasting, completely full. It seems silly to do that, but it’s probably good to try food when you are not completely starved and inhale anything edible :)

Well, so now we are trying to decide between the Ranch we loved so much during our last visit:

…and the first villa we just saw.

I’m starting to panic a bit as our fall is getting booked very quickly at this point and we’re in danger to not have a date for our wedding! I think we are going to choose within a couple of weeks and I’ll be sure to let you all know what we settled on :)

The first spot we checked out was one of Sonoma’s wineries. In just a few minutes after meeting the event manager we found ourselves with wine glasses in hands. I guess winery people think that the quicker they’ll get you drunk, the bigger the chance that you’ll book their venue :) The winery was beautiful, with an overgrown lawn overlooking the vineyards for the ceremony location and an awesome cobble stone reception spot for dining between old olive trees. I just looved the place! (Or was it the Chardonnay I was drinking at 11 in the morning? :) There was just one BUT: they do not allow any alcohol except their own wines which were naturally quite expensive and REALLY REALLY REALLY not that good. So we finished up with our complimentary tasting and went on to the next spot.

The next venue down the list was a charismatic bed and breakfast in downtown Sonoma. The place was cute overall, but it had a tiny (even for our size wedding) overgrown garden, high-priced rooms, and a pretty unpleasant coordinator lady who didn’t seem interested in us whatsoever. We decided to get a break and had a lunch on the main square in Sonoma.

At this point it was literally about 100 degrees outside and the idea of waiting out the heat was becoming quite tempting. We did have an appointment scheduled at a pretty well known winery though, so we had to go on. This one was really nice. I mean just about everything was very, very nice – from the sweet lady who showed us around, to all the different ceremony and reception spots on their property – we had a blast enjoying this one. And while everything was beautiful, I totally didn’t feel it, and it was difficult to actually imagine our wedding there. Oh and of course the tour of the property ended with a complimentary wine tasting. This time we didn’t even resist: it was pretty hot outside after all :)

Ahead of us was an hour long drive towards the Russian River. I was really looking forward to seeing that last place and was anxious to get there! Well – we came, we saw, we loved it! This place is a hundred-year-old retreat on the shore of the Russian River and seems to be just perfect for us! We really wanted to turn our wedding into a whole weekend of celebration with the official part on the first day and fun and chilling out on the following days. This venue has a heated pool (Mike was sold), tiny but very cute cottages for the guests, a private beach on the river and even a bonfire area! We would get married and have a reception in their orchard among the old apple trees and then maybe have the dancing by the pool. Sounds just PERFECT for us!!!

During the ceremony we would stand between the old plum trees (where Mike is standing):

I’m still tempted to go back and check the rest of the places that the Venue Scout had sent to us. If for no other reason than at least for the free wine tastings! :) Stay tuned for more!!!

The truth is that this summer has been so crazy for us and it’s flying by so fast that we haven’t yet made much progress with our wedding plans. Well, except for the growing list of links to various wedding blogs which my friend and I send to each other about a hundred times a day, with words of “OMG this looks so awesome, we have to have it for the wedding!” :)

We’ve been searching high and low all this time for the perfect venue. You’d think this would be easy for us, being wedding photographers, considering that we see a new venue or two every weekend. The search, however, has been a challenge because I believe the location is the most important part of the wedding and sets the mood of the event. What we know is that we want to have an intimate outdoor wedding in the wine country, preferably among the vineyards.

Napa, Sonoma, and the surrounding areas have so many gorgeous venues that I was sure I’ll find something perfect right away. Well, after two months of research it turned out that it’s not that easy to find THE location. At one point I even became tired and disappointed, even thinking that maybe City Hall is an option for us. I was hopelessly scanning some online directories when I stumbled upon the Venue Scout – a service for finding wine country locations. Kristen, the lady behind Venue Scout, is awesome and was just Godsend! She wrote down our concerns and wishes (a whole lot of them!) and searched the entire region for the venue perfect for us.

Sooo, we’ll be driving North tomorrow, Kristen’s list in hand, and visiting the first 5 or 6 venues (and that’s only half of the list!). I’m soo excited I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep tonight. Wish us luck!!!

We’ll keep you updated!

Natasha

I really thought that being surrounded by brides, wedding vendors, locations, flowers, bridal parties and all the wedding talk all the time I’d be much better prepared to become engaged. Also, with Mike being honest and not sneaky at all I always thought that I would know exactly when he’d start planning the proposal. Well, I was wrong! Mike took me completely by surprise and till today I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night just to find the ring on my finger and realize one more time that this is not a dream.

Love my new ring:

So here’s how it happened:

As some of you might know my parents are here visiting us for a month from Russia and living with us for the past three weeks. Mike and I are really used to the serene silence of our apartment while we sit behind the computers whole day long, so it’s been kinda crazy having two more people around. Anyway, March 31st was going to be our 4th anniversary with Mike, but between the preparations for his big birthday this year and my parents’ visit, I didn’t think of it much and was going to celebrate it by having some tea and cake at home. I know it’s kinda lame and not at all romantic, but I was tired!

So on Tuesday the 31st my parents and I decided to go shopping in San Francisco. Right before we left Mike told me that he’s going to pick us up from the city to go to our favorite restaurant by the park – Park Chow – to celebrate the occasion. I got very excited as we both looove this restaurant; but I still couldn’t even guess what was coming!

Mike picked us up after long day of shopping around Market and Union Square; we were hungry, exhausted, and could barely walk. In the restaurant, between me being very tired and us having to translate the whole menu to my parents I didn’t notice how super nervous Mike was; he wasn’t himself at all, was talking non-stop and didn’t even touch any of the delicious appetizers we ordered! Then, right after we finally got our orders and lifted our forks, Mike started saying a toast at the end of which he asked my parents for their permission to marry me! Our jaws just dropped to the floor! Mike did a beautiful job saying the whole nerve-wreaking toast in Russian so my parents would understand him! Then my dad looked at my mom and in complete shock said: “What’s the proper answer in this situation?” I have to admit that during the whole time while Mike was talking to my parents I felt a bit left out and was thinking “what about me? so my opinion doesn’t matter?” :)

Then out came a beautiful red box and in the next second Mike was on his knee in front of me, asking me to marry me! It all was so much like a dream, I was crying and couldn’t even see what he put on my finger! I guess with my dad sitting there in shock and my mom and I crying it was an interesting scene, so the waitress came to ask if everything was OK! I guess she might have thought that we really didn’t like the food that she just brought us! :)

The rest of the dinner went with me staring at my beautiful new ring in complete disbelieve, my mom tearing up non-stop and my dad nervously finishing up his dinner portion and then my mom’s :) The only person who could finally relax was Mike who was able to finally eat without the pressure of the huge secret on his shoulders and the weight of the ring in his pocket!

It’s been two weeks. Most of our friends already know as it slowly becomes a reality. I feel so lucky and blessed to have Mike in my live, to share everything we have and to work together! I’m still shocked that he knows me so well; I would not be able to plan a more perfect proposal for myself, everything from the ring he gave me to the place he picked for it was just perfect! And it meant so much to me that my parents, who are usually so far away, got to share that moment with us!

Mishka, I love you so much and just cannot wait to become your wife!

We’re going to start planning the wedding now. Any advice would be appreciated as I don’t even know where to start :) To publicly answer the two questions we get asked all the time now: no, we still have no idea when and where the wedding will be and no, we don’t know yet who’ll be shooting it (although I have a couple of uber-talented photographers on my mind :)

Natasha

To read more about our wedding planning and everything we’re learning along the way, check out “Our Wedding” category of posts!