A couple weeks ago Sean and I met with Carmen, a potential wedding planner and day-of coordinator. We’ve been able to handle planning ourselves thus far, but from the beginning knew we’d likely need a day-of coordinator. There are a lot of organized and on-task people in my family — several family members are experts when it comes to parties — but they’re in the wedding party. I can’t expect my mom to coordinate the set-up at the reception venue if she’s taking photos with the rest of the wedding party.

Enter Carmen, referred last year by Wendy. We met at Carmen’s home in Alhambra. Not only was she organized and informative, she was also a great hostess. She offered us drinks and delicious homemade zucchini bread. I passed on the coffee, but had to try the zucchini bread. I love zucchini anything.

We caught Carmen up our plans, progress thus far, and what we’d need help with going forward. She assured us that we were on task for our timeline. It felt good to know that we weren’t behind, especially as I compare myself to bloggers or brides posting on the Weddingbee boards. I also like that Carmen speaks Spanish, is comfortable MC’ing and didn’t judge us for having a big guest list like other vendors. She’s coordinated 400 people Mexican weddings, this should be easier.

The only thing Carmen admonished us about was the invitations. We’ve just ordered them. Yeah, we know we’re cutting it close but it should be okay since we sent out save-the-date magnets in February. About those…

The minimalist characters were created by our friend Dennis de Groot, a talented illustrator/graphic designer. His recent work features minimalist renderings of pop culture icons like Donatello of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson of The Roots. Fifty illustrations have been included in his book Bare Essentials (2011). ‘Essentials’ is currently on display at Battalion, Lijnbaansgracht 206 in Amsterdam. Sean worked on the layout for the magnets using Dennis’ illustration.

Sean’s friend and former co-worker, Noma, agreed to design our invites last fall. A couple weeks ago, she sent us ten (!) different options — she said she got a little carried away. The various invitations differed in printing costs and how they incorporated our colors and other ideas. Although we don’t have a particular theme, we wanted the invitations to reflect the bicoastal and long distance origins of our relationship. We sent her these cards from Etsy for some inspiration: a tale of two cities and you and me city skyline. Dennis got married to his girlfriend, Sherisa, in 2010; their invitation was an inspiration as well.

Noma did an amazing job. We loved all of her designs, but picked two that would fit our budget and be less work to assemble. The invitation above was one of our favorites, but not the one we’re gong with. Last week, Noma priced printing options for everything including the envelopes and designed the reply cards. On Monday she put in the order. We should have invitations soon!

Sean and I haven’t been trying to make our wedding aesthetics “us” since that’ll be taken care of based on the fact that we’ll be the ones at the altar. How much more “us” can it be? I understand reflecting taste, personality and relationship history in weddings, but it seems like a lot of extra work. The invites and save the dates, however, were areas where wee knew we could express our personalities and relationship without trying too hard. I’m grateful we have friends like Noma and Dennis who are willing to use their time and talent to help us achieve that goal.