Important information

Check out our wedding website for some new information and be sure to keep an eye out for any updates during the next THREE weeks.

Kicking @$$ and taking names!

Wow... with only a little more than five weeks left to go in the wedding countdown things are really starting to get busy. There are a TON of little details that Greg and I are working on that are really exciting. It's easy to feel stressed with all of the minute details but those are the most important!!! All along, my one wish for this wedding was to keep it personal and slightly unique and I have to say that my amazing fiance has done an amazing job of helping me achieve this goal for our wedding. I've got to give this man a lot of credit. Most people think that the wedding is a bride's thing. That's not the case here. For those of you who don't know, Greg has been involved in every decision that we've made and, on a lot of those decisions, his fantastic and creative ideas have really enhanced the overall vision for our big day. He's got a great mind and a knack for solving problems too. I'm really lucky - our wedding is just one day but I get all these skills for the rest of my life. Saweet!


This past weekend was filled with a lot of creative brainstorming and today was a really great day for getting a lot done. We had a six hour drive to Jefferson City, MO this weekend (12 hours round-trip) to see our beautiful friends, Tim and Christen Meisel, tie the knot. Their wedding was such an inspiration and we've even decided to steal a few of their ideas - thanks T&C!


Today Greg and I met up after work and picked up our wedding rings. It's so great to see the rings - it really makes the whole getting married thing a reality. Especially Greg's. I'm already wearing a ring on my left hand but this is a big thing for him (and his ring is perfect - he picked it out with Nit, his best man, and today was the first time I've seen it. I love it!) After the rings we figured we'd run with the wedding ideas pulsing in my veins so we picked up a guest book, looked at some decorations for the reception, and picked up some final accessories for his tux. Watching him try that tux on - in it's entirety - tonight was awesome. He's a good lookin' dude but seeing him all gussied up is pretty cool. I finally found a dress for the rehearsal dinner so life is good. I was starting to think I was going to show up in my pajamas - everyone had a dress for the night but me!


This weekend will be filled with tons of other wedding errands and I'm loving it. Can't wait for the big day so all of these grand ideas can finally come to fruition!


<3

Thankful.

I am currently en route to NoVa for what is shaping up to be an amazing bridal shower / bachelorette party and I am feeling so lucky to have such amazing women in my life.

Having family in so many places, all across the country, has definitely made planning this wedding pretty interesting for us and the other bridal festivities have been no different. How do you get everyone together from East to West to North to South to witness the nuptials? And THEN how do you get them together AGAIN for all of the other stuff? You ask very nicely, I guess.

As the RSVPs have come in, we have felt so lucky to see how many people want to share this special day with us and as I'm getting ready to land and I start thinking about all of the women I'm going to see in a few hours I'm feeling lucky again.

Just to name a few... My mom, who has managed to pull everything together seamlessly. My two beautiful sisters, who have been ultra-helpful. My future mother-in-law who is traveling all the way from AZ and then BACK to Chicago with me for next weekend's other bridal shower tea. Michele and Dee, two women who love my family as if it were their own and who we all love in turn. And my girlfriends, many of whom I haven't seen in two years but remain as close as before I moved. Good friends.

And so, I'll say it again: I am lucky. And I know that. I think that, when you've got good stuff in your life, it's important to recognize it. And be thankful.

What are YOU thankful for?

It works!

Hooray!

I think I just learned how to blog the remaining two months from my iPhone!! If this works then I will be wayyyy better about keeping this thing up to date. And the last few months are the most fun anyway! Here's to hoping this works :-)

Busy, busy

The countdown on my homepage says that we have 153 days, 7 hours, and 15 minutes until we get married! It's probably more accurate to say that is the time until the ceremony starts (plus or minus a few minutes) and that it's really 153 days, 7 hours, and 45 minutes until we are 110% husband and wife. But who's counting down, really?! ;-)

We've done a lot of planning in the last month or two and I think we are almost out of the woods and into the next sit-back-and-relax-until-the-next-crazy-starts-again phase. So what have we been up to?

Well... we finally decided on and booked our honeymoon! Yay! We will be going to Greece: spending two nights in Athens, flying to the island of Mykonos and spending four nights there then ferrying to the island of Santorini and spending the last four nights there. We are so excited and I love hearing everyone's Greece story (and it seems like EVERYONE has one) so feel free to share yours with us if we haven't heard it.
Sidenote: We couldn't have done it without the help of Jim Augerinos at Perfect Honeymoons in NoVa. Greg has two colleagues who recently worked with him to help plan their honeymoons so we decided not to struggle any longer and it was a great choice. Neither of us has ever worked with a travel agent before but I plan on working with Jim for any big trip we decide to take in the future. (And you better believe that Greg and I have a lot of travel plans for the next few years!)

We also did the whole registering thing and that was fun. We've decided to take the less traditional route and go with a honeymoon registry instead. Seeing as how we've been living together for the past three years, already own a home, etc. we don't really need most of the traditional wedding gifts. Having a honeymoon registry is a great alternative as it allows our guests to give us memories by purchasing parts of our honeymoon. You can purchase hotel nights, airline miles, dinners here, museum tours there... it's a really cool idea! Our friends, the Vogels, did it when they got married a few years ago and loved it and I think we will too. (Never fear - for our more traditional guests, we did create a small registry at Bed Bath and Beyond - hey, you could always use a new pot or pan!).

What else have we done? It feels like we've been putting out a lot of tiny fires but I guess that's to be expected. Turns out the photographer we booked who we thought was awesome actually.. isn't. So we've been on the hunt for a new one. Our wedding planner got a new job so that threw us for a sec but we LOVE working with our new coordinator and think she is going to make everything perfect.

Today we are *hopefully* having our last floral consultation and then we can make a decision on that. I hope hope hope that we can make a decision after this because I'd really love to check this off our list. Then we get to start on the fun stuff... cake tasting next weekend (and we've been looking at cake toppers, always fun!) and food tasting sometime in the next month. We have found the perfect videography team and are SO excited to be working with them. Colors have been settled on, bridesmaids are ordering their dresses, Greg got a banging! tux which he will look wonderful in. Everything is coming together and we can't wait. But I guess we will have to because there's still 153 days, 7 hours, and 7 minutes until it all begins.

Tears

Everytime I listen to music that will be used for the wedding ceremony I tear up. Every. Time. Without fail. I can be sitting at work listening to the piano station on my Pandora and one of the songs comes on and I've got tears in my eyes. AT WORK. Not only is that semi-embarassing but it kind of makes me worried that I am going to blubber through the whole day. Now, for those of you who know me, I'm guessing you're probably already expecting this since I am that girl that cries over everything - good, bad, happy, sad, funny... you name it. Maybe it's good that I keep crying now. Maybe this is like systematic desensitization. By the time the wedding comes maybe I'll be so used to the songs that it won't be such an emotional thing.

Then again... we've been engaged for 15 months and I've had some of these songs in my head for almost as long and they still make me weepy.

Let's Get Ready to Ruuuuumble!

The funny thing about weddings, at least for me, is the discrepancy in planning-associated stress based on where you are in your wedding timeline. Get engaged - freak out, stress, plan, book, sign contracts, freak out some more. Then there's a waiting period where there's nothing to do but twiddle your thumbs. You'll note below that I haven't posted since August. It's almost February. Now... almost 6 months to go and we're back to plan, plan, plan! mode because...

IT'S GO TIME!

More posts to come :0)

The Honeymoon.

Ah... The Honeymoon. What to say about The Honeymoon? Well, for starters... it's been the most difficult part of the wedding so far. To say I am surprised by this would be slightly understating it but now that I think about it, I really shouldn't be that surprised at all. Greg and I like to obsess about things and we take a while to make any big decisions. The Honeymoon definitely falls into the category of big decisions. Still, it was much easier deciding where to get married, picking a photographer, and it was practically a piece of cake when it came to choosing my wedding dress. I was trying to figure out why choosing where to go on The Honeymoon was proving to be a challenge and the only thing I can come up with is that there are so many options. True, there were a lot of options when it came to finding a venue or a dress but there weren't nearly as many as you would think. Choosing the Hotel Monaco was an easy choice because it was so us. We absolutely love Kimpton Hotels (I even worked a short stint at one when we lived in Alexandria) and the french couture-y style at the Monaco made it a no-brainer. Same thing with the dress. It's a very "me" dress. I wonder what is a very "us" honeymoon though... "Us" includes a lot of words like luxury, relaxation, service, food, and new. Unfortunately, that could mean a lot of different spots on the planet and a lot of different accommodations.

When we started thinking about The Honeymoon we agreed that we didn't want to go somewhere we had already been. We hadn't quite decided whether we wanted to do a beach-y lazy trip or a fun see-it-while-you-can trip but we did know we wanted to go away for at least 10 days, give or take a few. We started thinking about using miles and going somewhere domestic, maybe Napa/Washington wines or East Coast seafood. Then we realized we would probably have enough miles to go international and that right there is when things started getting really complicated. Did we want to do French Polynesia, Mexico, the Mediterranean....? Did we want to go somewhere super luxurious that was a once-in-a-lifetime place and stay in more moderate digs or go somewhere more easily accessible and affordable and stay in a luxurious and lavish setting? Do we want beaches, a cruise, driving through towns? WHAT DO WE WANT?

We still don't know. When I first asked for suggestions via my facebook status, everyone had such varied answers that I was slightly frustrated. But then I realized that everyone had such varied answers because everyone has different wants. I think we need to figure out what we want before we can do anything else but that'll only get us but so far. I will say this, however: if this is the hardest decision we have to make when it comes to tying the knot then we are extremely lucky.

Honeymooning

My mind keeps drifting to our honeymoon while I work. So many choices - what to choose? This might be one of the more difficult decisions we make. Any thoughts?