BogusRed's Sketchblog

Home » Blogs » BogusRed's Sketchblog

BogusRed's Sketchblog

Random musings from the PaperDemon admin.

This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not those of my employer. This site is not associated with Google, Inc.

Tried out Smarty Templates

Mar 30, 2009 3:50 pm by BogusRed

Just about every PHP programmer has heard of or used Smarty Templates.

I had heard of it a long time ago, but only just recently started using it. For the longest time, I have been using good old phpLib's Template.inc. It is simple and suits most of my needs. But it's quite old. I've been using it for like 7 years.

A colleague of mine convinced me to try out Smarty. I used it to create a new RSS feature for PaperDemon.com's blogs (and also added an RSS feed for my blog on BogusRed.net as well, subscribe to me!). I did it using Smarty because it seamed like a good thing to templatize and also because Smarty has a really good caching system. So if people's RSS readers are constantly pinging the RSS feed pages, the PHP won't have to pull from the database every time. +1 for performance!

| Permalink | Comments (0) | Post a comment

Wedding Venue Visit #1

Mar 29, 2009 5:17 pm by BogusRed

Today I visited my first two possible venues for my wedding. They both have their pros and cons.

One has really good food and works well as a party space. But it doesn't have quite the right feel I'm looking for and I don't like the ceremony space. I'd want to do the ceremony in one place and the reception in another.

The other has a beautiful wooded outdoor space and would work for both the ceremony and the reception. The dining would be outdoors and from the photos it looks especially pretty at night. However, the indoor space layout feels rather awkward. Though we may not spend much time indoors except for going to the bar and for dancing.

So far I'm not in love with either of them. I've still got plenty of time so I'll continue to line up visits to other venues over the next few weekends. I want to make a decision by May.

| Permalink | Comments (0) | Post a comment

10K? No way!

Mar 28, 2009 12:27 pm by BogusRed

In my last post I mentioned I had found some places that did packaged wedding deals for about 7K so I had kept my budget at that 10K. It turns out that there were other expenses that I hadn't considered. For one thing, there is an additional 27.25% cost on top of the listed price for gratuity, service, and sales tax. One in particular that I liked also charged an extra $700 for the ceremony. All these costs pushed the packaged deal over 10K and I wouldn't have anything left for invites, flowers, attire, photographer, decorations, etc.

After talking to several brides and wives that have been through this, 10K is completely unrealistic. My new budget is 20K and even that is with sacrifices.

Those of you that are thinking I'm splurging and wasting money on "only one day" need to get a reality check. YOU try and plan a wedding and see how far it gets you. In the bay area, California, EVERYTHING is more expensive. The cost of living is so sky high here, that the cost of everything from flowers, to food, to service is higher than other places.

The major items that seem to be sticky price points are the venue and the food. One fellow bride explained to me that because we are in an area that is so fully developed, there are not many gardens or natural looking areas that would be suitable for a wedding. Because there are less options, less competition, and therefore higher costs. Food is also more expensive because of service costs.

Another huge cost that has been difficult to wrap my head around is a Photographer. Originally I was thinking of having a friend or perhaps someone just starting out in wedding photography do it at low to nothing cost and just give me the high res/raw files (no prints). But after talking to a Photographer friend who explained to me that photographers HATE doing weddings, I am realizing that its best to go with someone who does weddings professionally.

I'll be visiting two venues this weekend. One is currently at the top of the running.

| Permalink | Comments (0) | Post a comment

Starting the Wedding planning

Mar 18, 2009 8:29 pm by BogusRed

I'm finally starting to get serious about my wedding planning. I have a list of venues that I'm following up on for more info. I'm still sticking to my budget of 10K. There are a few places I've found that have complete wedding packages for prices under 10K and allow for some customization. One of them even has a themed meal similar to the Medieval Times meal (silverware optional!). I'm hoping I can get a wedding package that's cheap enough where I can afford to hire a nice photographer.

Being an artist makes things like planning weddings extra difficult. As an artist, I am very picky about my tastes and ideas and want to express my creativity every chance I can.

I'm still leaning towards creating my own dress. If Mike is into it, I might make him a silk tunic to bring him more into the Fantasy theme.

I'm thinking it might be cool to have leaves thrown instead of flower pedals during the ceremony. Or maybe a mixture. It might be cheaper too.

| Permalink | Comments (0) | Post a comment