Getting Hitched

So congratulations! You've gotten engaged! What could be a better thing to do on your first engaged weekend than to drag your beloved to Barnes and Noble and/or Borders, make him/her save you a table in the cafe, and then go and pick up every single wedding planning-related book and magazine in the store? (Take heed, intrepid warrior: you will be doing something like this for every single weekend until the date of the actual wedding.) And hey, if you're looking to save money, pick up Bridal Bargains, which was, hands down, the best wedding planning book we found.

If you're getting married in the Bay Area, the first book everyone gets is Here Comes The Guide. Yeah, ha ha, funny -- but it has a neurotically complete listing of every single place you can get married in Northern California, complete with lovely line drawings of each location. You can actually get a free copy of the book if you go to certain bridal gown places in the area, but it might just be better to pay for it. Honestly, SFist found all bridal gown places a little overwhelming but hey, if you're going anyways, why not? (SFist thrifted it and got a great deal!) Other good listings of locations include the San Francisco and Golden Gate National Recreation Area's parks, which allow you to have outdoor weddings, some by the ocean and all a lot cheaper than some of the crazier places listed in the guidebooks. ($20,000 for the Asian Art Museum?)

The Here Comes The Guide website also has extensive listings of other vendors and services you may or may not need (caterers, photographers, florists, limousine rentals, custom cake tops, etc). For other local recommendations, there's also By Recommendation Only. Evil wedding behemoth theknot.com has a Bay Area chat group where people every now and then list recommendations. Be warned, though, they're a little corporate. If you're looking for a more indie feel, there's the indiebride chat groups too, which periodically have Bay Area recommendations as well, and of course, our beloved Craigslist (look in events or creative under services). And ask your friends -- for some reason, wedding vendor recommendations are stuck in our brain like the hits of the late 80s (meanwhile, SFist still can't find where we put our keys last night). Put your other recommendations in the comments! (While we're here, SFist is going to plug our wedding photographer, Jeff Walls.)

If you're a heterosexual couple, don't forget to pick up the license. As Britney Spears has informed us all, in California you have 90 days after you get the license to actually get married and 10 days to return the paperwork to your county clerk after the actual date. Same-sex couples, we stand with you on the battle lines for your right to take a number at the city clerk's office like you're at the butcher shop and fill out forms with a cheap black pen attached to a desk by a small mini-chain made up of little metal balls (and to have all our relationships acknowledged as legitimate and valuable by the state too).

In California, you can license anyone to marry you -- either through the one-day deputization program (good anywhere in California) or through the free ordination procedures from the various chapters of the Universal Life Church. (ulc.org offers instantaneous ordination, whereas ulc.net takes a day or two for processing). A ULC marriage is valid in California, before you ask.

So hey! That's not so bad! On the dealing with family, friends, the invite list, the twenty members of your wedding party, bachelor party trauma, caterer woes, wedding insurance dilemmas, and everything else -- baby, you're on your own.