I highly recommend. Not that Wedding Paper Divas needs the Babbling Bride's endorsement. Any bride-to-be who belongs to The Knot has heard about their "unique wedding invitations and stationary." And they've been featured in bridal magazines galore. But with the many, many online stationary websites out there, I had to propose this option to my fellow planners.

I just ordered my save the date cards and it was a great experience. WPD has a variety of layouts and designs to choose from. My wedding style is traditional, but I wanted to have a little more fun with Save the Dates. Fun, but not too quirky. I also knew which engagement photo I wanted to use so the card had to work with the image. Even with something that specific in mind, I came across dozens of options.

Another perk: The WPD website is user-friendly. While you're browsing, you can start the selection process by saving cards you like and then comparing them. And if you're not sure what you're looking for, there are categories to narrow down the many options and make your search easier.

Once you choose your card it's very simple to upload your image(s) and customize your text. I started working on mine a couple of weeks ago and then got sidetracked. It was easy to save a draft of my "project" and go back to it later.

When I ordered last night, I was asked a few different times (via a pop-up message) if I needed to chat live with one of their customer service reps before proceeding to checkout. And I was prompted to proofread a few different times before finalizing my order.

But what really made me feel great about my WPD order was the price. In my option, the cost of their save the date cards are already managable to begin with, but once you create an account with WPD, they offer you great promotional deals. I received a nice discount on my order AND free shipping.

So if you want to send your guests a unique announcement telling them to reserve your wedding date, check out Wedding Paper Divas.

With seven months to go until the wedding, I'm really getting excited that in about half a year from now BK will be my husband. But that also means there are only 227 more days I'll get to spend with my father's last name.

The whole name change is something I've been thinking about for a while now. But it really hit me this morning that I don't have much time left as Melissa Brooks.

So at the risk of sounding dramatic, I guess you could say I've gone into early mourning over the inevitable loss of my surname.

No one is forcing me to comply with this social convention in which a woman traditionally drops her surname and takes on her husband's when she marries. But for me, it's not about not wanting to take his name -- it's about not wanting to lose mine in the process.

In a few weeks I'll have lived 27 years as a Brooks. After all of this time, it almost seems unnatural to suddenly begin answering to a last name different from the one stamped on my birth certificate.

Of course the actual name change is a bothersome process that requires getting a new driver's license, passport and credit cards. Not to mention changing subscriptions, memberships, e-mail addresses. But I'm not even talking about this aspect of it.

What's been bothering me about the name change is how psychologically and emotionally tough it will be to accept a new name as my identity.

If I change my name, I lose a little bit of myself, of my connection to my ancestry. I become a Brooks in parentheses on the family tree.

I'm kinda attached to my name. It's clean, simple -- I really quite like it. As a "B," I was always one of the first to be called on when teachers took attendance. It's the name my parents cheered for when I graduated from North Penn High School, and then from Pennsylvania State University. It's the name my grandmom loves seeing in print every week.

And it's the name that's sparked many nicknames. All my life I've been Mel Brooks. Brooksie and "Our Miss Brooks" to a few teachers. MAB (and crazy variations of my initials, e.g., Mabs, Mabster, Mabella) to friends.

If assuming my husband's name is a symbol of allegiance to him, to our new life together as a unit, then what happens to my former life as M. Brooks? As I make the transition from a one-syllable name to three syllables, will I ever again be called Mel Brooks?

I'm not calling for gender equality in the surname game. I'm not one of those women who thinks, "Well, why shouldn't he take my name?" Or, "Let's meet half way and mutate our names together!" Nor do I want to become the law offices of Brooks and Kukulka.

So to be clear, I am making the change. But I will not downplay how difficult it will be. I think it's a big change, one worth recognizing. And for me, an over-analytical and often sentimental person, it's something I have to work out with myself. Just writing about it is helping me to do that.

While changing my last name raises the question of what a new name means in terms of my identity, not changing it would cause me to question, "How am I connected to my future -- my children and grandchildren?"

In the end, having the same name as my future kiddies is more important to me than clinging onto a name I know is -- and will always be -- very much a part of me, whether it's still legally mine or not.

This afternoon I decided to Google my soon-to-be last name (surprisingly I haven't done this before). I knew it was Polish. I discovered it's also a small settlement in Poland. Really small, as in population: 30.

My first name means honey bee in Greek, and today I learned my new Polish last name translates to cuckoo, as in the common cuckoo bird. Kukulka is also the name of a Polish candy.

It's a lovely thing -- finding the right shoe. I haven't yet found my wedding day shoe, but the search is on. And so far, I've focused much of my attention on Badgley Mischka beauties.

Some favorites:

Dreamy, in pink, 3 ¼ inches

Hyde, in blue, 3 7/8 inches

Randall, blue, 3 7/8 inches

Randall, in pink

Randee, pink, 4 inches

And I can't forget about this delicious pair. But I also can't track them down! I noticed them a while back on a stationary blog called The Finer Things, under the post, "Peony and Pewter Wedding." No designer or brand name mentioned. The Knot is credited on the photo (notice the mini "k"), but I've browsed all shoes on that site and cannot find these mysterious "dark grey heels adorned with pink blooms." Anyone out there have a clue?

Addendum: DESIGNER FOUND! And go figure -- they're Badgley Mischka! But I still haven't found their proper shoe name or seen them for sale on any website. A "Real Weddings" feature on theknot.com reveals a Nebraska bride found them online and purchased them from Piperlime. But I checked, and they're not posted there. In a random search for "Badgley Mischka Spring 2010 shoes" (I guessed), they actually popped up a few times -- but on blogs that didn't post further details. I guess because they're "older" (in terms of current fashion), they're not as easy to find as some other styles. But I did come to a conclusion after catching a side view of this shoe in my obsessive search: It may not be the pair for me afterall. As much as I love those Peony-looking puffs, this is a true strappy sandal, a type of shoe that tends to make my foot feel naked. But then again, I'd really have to see them in person and try them on.

I found another winning pair, Badgley Mischka's Xolani, in ivory satin. I'd planned to avoid ivory shoes altogether, because I really do want a pop of color. But I can't discount this one for its overall sleek sophistication. There's a sweetness to this shoe in the tulle bow accent, and this whimsy is juxtaposed by the glamorous metallic heel. Nicely done.





With all of this research under my belt, I'd say it's time to hit the fine department stores.

I have a major addendum to my last entry. We booked our videographer! It is such a relief to be able to check this one off. It'd been sitting at the top of my list (and hanging over my head) for quite some time.

I'd done quite a bit of research and had a specific aesthetic in mind. It seemed like I'd finally found what I was looking for in a top Philadelphia-based company, but their prices were insanely high -- like way out there. I kept plugging away with the search, but most of the sample videos I came across seemed lame and their websites were cheesy.

What did I see in Branded Productions? The "about" on my chosen videographer's Facebook page says it all: "Because we believe cheese goes well with wine, not with video."

Aha! A company that gets it.

When I first spoke with Ed, Branded's owner, he said their cinematic wedding videos aim to take portions of the big day and string them together as a cohesive story. They would tell our story. That really resonated with me.

As a journalist, I am a storyteller. I absolutely love listening to people, learning about their experiences and then piecing together the tidbits they share.

To hear someone refer to the making of my wedding video as a form of storytelling meant a lot to me. I felt the same comfort in choosing my wedding photog, who began her career as a photojournalist. I see the same value of storytelling in her photos.

I'll often be having a conversation with someone and a red flag goes up at something they say (that's a story!). Or I'll be interviewing someone who shares a detail in passing, not realizing it's the very information they disregard that's interesting to others. I make sense of the world through stories.

In my search for a videographer I've actually enjoyed watching highlights of strangers on their wedding days. A glance, a pat on the back, a tear, a smile. They're unplanned moments caught on camera, and they say a lot about these people.

So here's a piece of Babbling Bride advice for other engaged ladies planning their weddings: A good wedding video tells a story.