Our First Bridal Show

The Chem Geek Princess and I attended a bridal show today down at the Hotel Albuquerque at Oldtown. This one was small, with about 20 vendors, and we were able to get to every booth. There was also a band playing almost continuously, and a bridal gown fashion show.

We spent a good amount of time at the Pennysmith's Paper Co. booth, looking at invitation papers. The Knight Errant has a calligrapher friend who has offered to do the invitations by hand, so we need nice paper. We also tasted wedding cake, and walked around munching on Hors d'ouvres, as we looked at photgrapher samples, videographers, and tuxedos.

At several booths, the Chem Geek Princess was asked to show her engagement ring so that the vendors could admire it. (I imagine they do quite a bit of ring admiring at these events). One photographer oohed and ahhhed, and then said, 'That diamond cut is European, isn't it?" The CGP allowed that it is. It turns out that this woman photographs weddings all over the world, and showed us many lovely photographs. As we talked, the CGP told her engagement story. The photographer told us that this was the most unique engagement story she had heard. She called her husband over, saying: "Can you believe this? Her fiance flew her to London to propose in a castle!"

Currently, the CGP is considering being married at the Loretto Chapel, in Santa Fe, but they are also considering a destination wedding within the United States. She wants a beautiful, elegant, and very small wedding; their guestlist has only 50 people on it, including the wedding party. I like the idea of the Loretto Chapel, which has a beautiful wooden spiral staircase to the choir loft that was built by a mysterious stranger.

I think the CGP and her Knight are leaning towards the destination wedding, since most of the guests will have to travel anyway, so it does not matter where we hold it. The destinations all have beautiful wedding chapels and packages that do make the planning easier, and in many of those places, the whole wedding can be done at a reasonable cost.

It will be interesting to see what they decide, and I can live with either option.

But I do lean towards Loretto in Santa Fe . The well-traveled photographer does also, and after hearing what she wants, thought that would be best, unless we can make a wedding trip to Prague in the Czech Republic!

Mmmm. Hmmm. Prague is nice for a destination wedding. Maybe we can get the Altenushul?