i {heart} etsy.

It's no secret that I used etsy A LOT for my wedding. I found so many fantastic little details from vendors on etsy and I loved having those touches scattered around that day. So how excited was I when one of these awesome vendors blogged about my wedding last week!?

Grace Hester Designs etsy shop has so many great prints available for purchase. I ordered her Wedding Keepsake Print and used it as a guest book alternative at the reception. We had it framed in an oversize photo mat, and then had guests sign the mat. Now it hangs in the hallway outside of our bedroom and pretty much looks fabulous! I took pictures of it last night to post on here, but apparently my camera cord got lost in the move, so until that shows up, you'll just have to imagine it hanging at home!

Head over to Grace's blog to see it in action at the wedding! Thank you Grace for such a special keepsake from our wedding. Oh and, she shipped the print with some A. Door. A. Bull notecards with both my maiden name and married name, which was a pretty fun surprise!

Details, Details, Details...

I just got back from Hobby Lobby (yes, again) where all their frames were half off! Woo! So I grabbed me a bunch and set out to make some little signs to set out at the wedding. Remember where I was self-teaching myself Adobe Illustrator? Well I finally figured out how to add some text and then how to save a file as a PDF, so I'm in business now. I'll just sneak some of these out on the office printer tomorrow and we'll be in business!



This sign will be for our favors. Which just might be my most favorite part of the wedding. I used the template my sister made for the invitations, so everything matches. Imagine that! It's like I do this stuff on purpose or something...

Hi Internets! *wave*

Well.. I'm back. For now, at least. The wedding is a mere 18 days away. Whoa. I can't believe our countdown is a) in the double digits, much less b) starting with the number one. (!!) I go from being beyond excited that It's here!! to being sick to my stomach that.... ohmygosh. people are going to come. what if they don't have a good time?! One thing's for sure. I know I am ready to marry this boy and start this new life together.

With the countdown dropping and my To Do List staring me in the face, I find myself trying to speed-learn adobe illustrator, bargain with Mark to add one more detail, tie a bow that doesn't look limp and lifeless and finally read the fine print on all our vendor contracts (what do you mean we can't bring our own chairs to the reception site?! [mini heart attack follows.]) I am putting out fires with some wacky small-town church ladies, making the trip to Hobby Lobby for the 14th time this week and waking up in the middle of the night thinking "what if the piano player doesn't know our version of this-and-that song?!?"

The closer it gets, the more surreal it feels. I'm used to going to other people's weddings. I can't even imagine what it's going to be like to be my wedding. Will everything get done between now and then? Probably not. But that's okay. Because even if every pew doesn't have a pomander on it, or if every table doesn't have a candle on it, or if every person doesn't leave with a program, at the end of the day, I'll still get to be a wife. A wife. Wow.

I Love the Smell of Fresh Ink in the Morning

The invitations are done! And they look so good! They are at Kinko's as we speak, where I am praying the nineteen year old kid wearing the polo behind and working the desk really did understand everything I explained to him about how to cut them. In two hours time, we should know.

Fingers crossed.

What's short and cute and blue all over?

The bridesmaid dresses! And.. they’re here!





I was having such a blah day. I am off work this week and decided to go walk around the mall to perhaps find a new sweater to wear to Oklahoma this weekend for Thanksgiving. I was armed with a whole stack of coupons and hit up the pre-Black Friday sales with high hopes. I did mange to find all kinds of cute stuff, as well as some great deals on a few Christmas gifts that I went ahead and knocked off my list. I was carrying a whole slew of bags with me and stopped to treat myself to lunch at Corner Bakery in the mall food court. I never eat at the mall when I am by myself, but I was feeling especially independent and snagged a single table over by the ice rink and sat back to enjoy my salad.

A cuople hours later, I’m in my apartment, putting away my purchases and stashing some gifts in the back of the closet when it suddenly occurs to me.. where is my Banana Republic bag? I run down to the car, nothing. Look back in all my other bags, nothing. Run back over to the mall, hit up Corner Bakery and EVERY store I went to, nothing. I lost a brand new sweater and dress that I had just bought, without so much as even trying them on first! I went back home and sulked/fumed/couldn’t get over how ridiculous I am for losing something a mere twenty minutes after I purchased it. Nothing could cheer me up.

Until! I was moping around when my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number so I let it go to voicemail, then checked the message as soon as it appeared on my cell screen. Maybe some honest chap had in fact turned in my lost Banana bag! (I’d left my number with mall security, just in case.) Well it wasn’t my lost loot, but instead the shop where I had ordered my bridesmaid dresses this summer - they were here! She said they could hold them for me as long as needed, but she wanted to let me know they were here and looked beautiful.

I jumped in the car and high-tailed it over to Plano, where I picked up all of the dresses. They. Looked. Fabulous. They might not be the cute LBD from Banana that some random girl out there it sporting courtesy of me (grr), but they are twelve adorable dresses that my bridal party are going to rock come July! Leave it to the wedding to turn my drag day into fab!

Check, Checkity, Check!

What's better than making a great big list of things to do, and then checking tasks off as you accomplish them?? For me, being the over-organized, list-loving, sharpie-carrying B2B that I am, not much!

Earlier this week, I met up with the WP to catch up on the wedding plans. She is a total rock star, and made me a calendar for the next eight months, showing what we need to be focusing on week by week. Now normally you would think that 32 weeks of things to do and projects to complete and crafts to craft would be terrifying/overwhelming, but I was so excited! I think its purely because of the calendar/To Do format that she used, which is one big list just waiting for me to cross things off of it. She, Mark and I are all sharing the calendar on Google documents, so we can all keep track of what we need to be working on and what's coming up ahead, as well as edit and change/add things to the plan as needed. Right now, we're on Save the Dates, which means I need to get them designed and printed (still waiting on the photos for that), get our wedding website completed (which is waaay more time consuming that I thought it would be!) and get some of the hotel blocks figured out. Apparently some people are WAY on the ball and book hotel rooms as soon as they know about the wedding. Who would have thought?!

It feels good to have a game plan now, and a nice organized list to keep us all on track. I'm off work all next week (yay Thanksgiving Break!), so I should be able to get cracking on it. Plus, we'll be spending time at both parents' houses for the holiday, so that should be plenty of time to sit around and work on our website, while we stuff our faces with turkey (twice!).


The infamous calendar, courtesy of my WP/BFF

Let's take this party across the border! (passports not required.)

Before we ever had a florist, a dress, a DJ or colors, we had our Rehearsal Dinner booked and its menu selected. Mark's parents are really on the ball. It only took about two weeks after we got engaged before they wanted to get our RD figured out and taken care of. We are so excited and grateful that they want to host this for us, so we agreed to meet them in Muenster one weekend this summer to scope out possible places for the party.

Now, in case you didn't already know, Muenster is a small town. Like really, really small. From the get go, the future in-laws were worried that they wouldn't be able to find something they liked or something that would be as nice and fancy as they had envisioned our Rehearsal Dinner being. I knew we could find something that would work, but they definitely had to be convinced. Mark and I did our homework before they came into town and scoped out anything and everything that might be what they were looking for. We had a list of local restaurants, tea rooms, hotels and bed and breakfasts that were in and around Muenster that would host a private party of our size. Many of them were really nice and quite charming. But there was one that stood out with the in-laws, hands down. The funny part? It's not in Muenster, or even Texas.. it's in Oklahoma!

So we are rehearsing in Texas, then taking our bridal party posse across the border to Mark's home state of OK for our RD at the Winstar Golf Course Clubhouse. (Yup, that's Winstar as in the ginormous casino just across the Texas border. Pay no attention to all the crazy grandma gamblers, just drive on past all those slot machines and neon lights to the scenic golf course tucked behind it!). It's a great setting, and can totally compare to any big city country club that we would never be able to find out in the sticks where we're getting married.

It sounds totally silly, but a dual state wedding is perfect for us. My family's from Texas, Mark's is from Oklahoma. I went to school at the University of Texas, Mark graduated from Oklahoma State. My friends are scattered around TX, his friends mostly call OK home. My extended family will be coming in from all over Texas, Mark's will be road-tripping it across Oklahoma for our wedding. And it's not as bad as it sounds... our small town wedding is actually less than ten miles south of the state line, so while it may sound like we have to drive miles and miles to get to our out-of-state rehearsal dinner, it's really no further than we'd likely have to drive anyways. Plus, we think its a great way to include a little bit of both of our backgrounds in our wedding weekend!

Find the perfect dress? Oh yeah, we did it!

This past Saturday, I gathered my posse and set out on a mission: buy a dress. No matter what, I was coming home with a dress ordered! I'd looked high and low and probably tried on fifty dresses already.. I knew what I wanted, I knew what my budget was, and we were going to find us a winner! It was game time.

I'm happy to report we was successful - THE dress has been ordered!

My mom, my little sister/MOH, my aunt and Mark's mom met at my apartment bright and early Saturday morning. I had warned them before: Go to bed early on Friday! Eat a big breakfast! Pack snacks! Bring drinks! We had three back-to-back appointments scheduled and there was no time for breaks. I meant business.

I'm thrilled with the dress I got, excited to have spent the day with these four awesome ladies and so very relieved to check this (rather large) wedding task off the list!


My aunt, me and my mom outside the shop where we found out winner!


Me and FMIL, with the official dress receipt!

Engagement Photos!

We (finally) took our engagement photos!

After a week of absolutely gorgeous weather (As in sunny and 72 degrees. In November. Thank you, Texas weather), I was stalking the forecast for our rescheduled e-pic photo shoot. There was talk of a cold front coming in the day before, and possibly some wind and light rain. I prayed in church the weekend before for this storm to hold off just one more day (judge me if you must, but we really did need to get these photos taken and off the To-Do List!) and was thrilled when we got up to Muenster around lunch time yesterday and it was still warm and sunny.

After some quick showers and sprucing-up on our part, Brooks and Leigh, from Brooks Whittington Photography, showed up at my parents’ place for the shoot. I had a couple places scoped out that we wanted to take photos at, so we made a quick game plan on where we’d go first. Much to my surprise, Brooks already knew about the photos I loved and even knew about my steal-of-a-deal white dress! Turns out, he’s came across my blog and had read about my inspiration pics (umm.. hi Brooks!).

So we headed to downtown Muenster to get started. It was a little awkward at first, because there are so many people everywhere, staring at us, while we canoodled outside of the bank. And the grocery store. And some restaurants. We had some pretty serious gawkers - one guy driving by even came to a stop on the road in front of us to stare. Maybe he thought we were celebrities? A few frantic outfit changes in the car later, and we ended the day taking pictures at my parents' house, as the sun was setting and the longhorns were eating. Yup, eating. I'm really curious/excited to see how they turn out! Brooks would show us a few of them on his camera screen every now and then, and they all looked fabulous! He told us it would take about a week and a half to get them all edited and up online and even said he really wanted to get me one to post here on my blog. Thanks Brooks and Leigh for a fun shoot! I'm counting down the days until we get to see the pictures!

Wedding Dress Shopping, 2.0

As I mentioned before, this dress shopping is proving to be tougher than I thought it would! After going to three different shops last week and really not finding anything that said to me I'M YOUR DRESS!, I felt discouraged and lost on where to go from there. So I did what any bride in this situation would do... I stalked anyone and everyone whose wedding photos I could find on Facebook. I like to see real brides wearing their dresses at their weddings more than just looking at the pictures of the models on the designers' websites, and what better place to find hundreds of wedding photos that the good ol' FB?!

I started looking through all the photos of my friends and if I saw one that looked like it was at a wedding, I stalked that person's photo album and found all sorts of lovely weddings, brides and dresses! I'm not going to lie, several of the photos in my Wedding Inspiration Folder on my computer (ok, they are actually all just saved to my desktop, taking over the screen, but whatev) are from random people's weddings that I don't know but found on Facebook!

I came across one of my Facebook friends whose profile picture was of her on her wedding day. She was wearing a gorgeous dress, with lace and detailing and a sweetheart neck and pretty much everything I was looking for. I am real life friends with this girl, sort of. We went to college together, she was a year or two younger than me, and I haven't talked to her in oh... five years. But I was feeling desperate and sent her a message asking who made her dress and where she got it. She wrote back right away and was super sweet (whew! I'm not a total Facebook stalker creeper!) and told me it was a Paloma Blanca and that she got it at Mockingbird Bridal in Dallas. Wha? I went there last week! But admitedly, we had just come from another store where I must have tried on 20 dresses and we barely had time to scarf down a quick lunch before our appointment at Mockingbird, so once we got there I was tired, hungry and slightly crabby. I breezed through the racks, grabbed five totally random dresses and tried them on, not liking any of them. I knew I didn't give Mockingbird a fair chance, so I called and made another appointment for Friday.

I did my research this time, scouring the Paloma Blanca site and picking out eight dresses that I wanted to try. I was off work Friday (Fair Day!), so I grabbed my BFF and Bridesmaid Virginia, and we showed up with a plan. We tried on four of the PB's I had on my list, as well as two others that I ended up snagging from the girl who was in the dressing room next to mine. She kept coming out in these gorgeous dresses that I'd be eyeing, and my sales associate was kind enough to get them for me to try as well.

I pretty much loved every one of the dresses I tried on. They were so fabulous. I have my Top Three, with a very good chance that one of them is The One! (!!!!)

I'm going to hold off posting the ones in the running, but since it's alway fun to look at dresses, here are more of the rejects! PS. These aren't the best photos because you aren't technically allowed to take pics at this shop. But BM V was totally awesome at sneaking them when we were in the fitting room!

Looking for "the one"

What do you think would prove to be more difficult? Finding a fiance or finding a dress? Well let me tell you my friends, it might have taken me 23 years to find Mark, but it's going to take me at least as many dresses to find "the one."

Any girl who has known anyone who's gotten married has heard stories of dress shopping. Stories of friends who put on a dress in the store and suddenly angels started singing and trumpets started sounding because it was the one. They just knew. Their heart skipped a beat and the suddenly saw themselves walking down the aisle to their one and only wearing this most perfect dress.

I haven't found that yet. Haven't even come close, really. I've found plenty of could-be-the-one's, or good-enough-to-be-the-one's, but nothing that's making the world halt when I step out of the dressing room. After trying on at least thirty dresses and (are you surprised?) some tears of frustration, I leave you with.. the rejects.










My mom and my aunt came along on this round of hunting and we ended our day with some margaritas while I sulked about dresses and nothing being out there that I liked (that didn't cost three times what I can spend) and why oh why are weddings so expensive?? But a few days later, I'm ready to start again and have a new perspective on it all. I know my one is out there!

October!

I LOVE October and have been anxiously awaiting it's arrival. As I was driving to work this morning it dawned on me that this would probably be my ideal month to get married in, except for the whole getting engaged in May and wanting more than a five month engagement.. well, and the whole college football rules our lives in the fall and between my Texas games, Mark's OSU games and my family's Tech games, we would never find a weekend that would make everyone happy! But I am excited to celebrate our future anniversary this month because it's finally really fall! (We celebrate the 10th of each month as our "future anniversary" because it's super fun and it makes the counting down to the wedding seem to go a little quicker, when every month there's a day to look forward to.) This month we'll be in Austin on the 10th for some UT football and a delayed engagement celebration with Miss Sadie Caplan.

October is also my official start of Operation Get My Bridal Booty Into Shape. My handy dandy wedding checklist recommends starting your workout regime eight months out, but since I am anticipating failing at this for awhile, I am going to go ahead and bump it back to nine months out. I certainly sent September out with a bang: we ate at Texas de Brazil on Tuesday and then had McDonalds TWICE for dinner last night. Seriously, we grabbed a burger around 7:00 and then hit it up again for a full blown meal a couple hours later. I checked the scale this morning and yeah.. it turns out its pretty easy to gain weight in a week. Let's see how tough losing it is!

To prove to you all that I am serious about this whole workout plan, I took the ultimate plunge and enrolled in a Boot Camp class that starts next month. It meets three times a week for six weeks and I am slightly terrified of it. I'm going to spend October getting ready for the pain that I know is coming (is it silly to work out in preparation for a work out?). It will end just in time for Christmas, where I'm sure I will promptly reverse all the good I did, but here's to hoping not!

October is also when wedding planning will finally really get kicked off! Yesterday Mark and I met up with the WP and her fave DJ. We went into it thinking we'd talk to the guy for 30 minutes, then maybe go check him out at a wedding later before deciding if we wanted to hire him. But, we ended up talking to him for an hour and a half and leaving with the feeling that he's our new BFF and asked him to go ahead and send over a contract because we were SOLD. He's just what we're looking for - not cheesy, totally normal, promising to build up the energy throughout the night and swearing he will not play Brick House or We are Family.

The WP gave us a fantastic calendar she made up for us mapping out what we need to be working on month by month. On the agenda for October (among some others): find a DJ (check!), look for a dress (more to come on that soon) and take our engagement pictures (so excited about this one!). Mark loved the calendar/To Do Lists (he loves a good list) and I was glad to call my mom with some specific tasks for us to start working on.

After our time with the DJ last night, we raced up to McKinney to meet with our sponsor couple from St. Gabriel's to start really discussing the results to our compatibility test. We covered the first four areas of the test and we actually scored a 100% on one of them: Friends and Interests. So Mark and I are pretty much in agreement that our friends all rock and we both feel totally good about each other's interests. It was really so interesting to look and see how our answers to certain questions differed and it really got us talking about some aspects of our relationship and communication styles that differ from each other. Nothing was a big surprise and the couple we are meeting with were really great about sharing their own experiences in their 20 year marriage and how they have learned to make their conflicting traits work well. I also had one of those "wow this is really happening" moments when they were reading a passage from the Bible about marriage and I started imagining being in the church on our wedding day, actually getting married.

We've got a lot coming up and I'm thrilled to get it all started!

Where Were We?

My mom called me yesterday to express that she is concerned that we've haven't really booked any vendors for the wedding yet. Well, we do have a pretty awesome photographer, a really creative florist, a guy who makes wedding cakes for $1.25 a slice (what, what!) and, of course, our fabulous WP. So what are we missing? Hmm. A caterer. A DJ. A "local band" my dad swears he can find for free. Rentals. Linens. Chairs. Silverware. Invitations. You know. Everything else. Oh and also, the dress. A pretty big one as well.

We are trying to find a time when my mom and I are both free to start checking some of these things off the list. This is proving to be pretty difficult for the entire month of October. Between the Texas/OSU football games we're going to and the Tech games my parents are going to, we've got nothing. So I think we are just both going to take off a random Monday or Tuesday, invite Mark's mom to come down and go look for dresses. Then I need to get the WP and me up to Muenster to meet with the florist to start deciding what and how many flowers we want. Next week we are finally meeting with that DJ, so that might get crossed off soon too.

Last week, Mark and I started our marriage preparation classes with St. Gabriel's in McKinney. It's Mark's church now and will be our church once we get married, so we opted to do all the prep work there, as opposed to driving back and forth to Sacred Heart for the next several months. Back when we first got engaged and were trying to pick a date, we had to go meet with Fr. Ken in person before he would even open his calendar to give us his open Saturdays next summer. So we ran up there one weekend to get the ball rolling. As many probably know, there's a lot of prep work required if you want to get married in a Catholic church. Depending on what parish you want to use, there are a series of things you must do before the wedding. Fr. Ken started right into us, telling us that in his experience of marrying hundreds of couples there are three factors that greatly increase your odds of staying married: 1. Both being at least 21 (check!), 2. Having dated for at least six months (umm hello, check x 5!), and 3. Participate in some sort (any sort) of marriage preparation, whether in the church or elsewhere (working on that check!). First up for us in the marriage prep category is meeting with a sponsor couple.

I was actually excited about starting to meet with a couple from Mark's church. I like meeting new people and was pumped to get this process started. So last week we braved the thunderstorms and drove over to the snazzy part of McK and met Mike and Denise, married 21 years and parents of two high school boys (not to mention their fabulous house on the golf course with the infinity edge pool and television as big as an entire wall in my apartment!). They were so nice and excited to meet Mark and me (and to hear some wedding details!) and were super easy to talk to right off the bat. As part of the initial meeting, Mark and I had to each take a "compatibility" test that included 156 statements that we were supposed to either agree with, disagree with or mark as undecided. Denise told us to be totally honest and not put down what we thought the other wanted us to say. Then they send off this test to some place that scores us and we spend the next five sessions together talking about things that will be strengths and weaknesses in our marriage. I'm pretty sure I know where the "red flags" are going to come up. Let's just say I know Mark agreed with the question about me using the "silent treatment" when I'm upset about something. Oh Lordy. But I am looking forward to going back over to their house next week. We're ready for the challenge!

Next up? Well, I'm working this entire weekend, but by noon on Sunday I'll be free again. I'm meeting another B2B to try on bridesmaid dresses that afternoon and then my parents are going to come up to Dallas to run some errands and grab dinner. In the meantime it's t-minus four days until my huge alumni reunion weekend at work... AHH!

Organize in Style

I love organization. I am a pro at making lists and crossing things off as I complete them. I love taking notes and making files. I once spent an entire morning at work reprinting the labels on all my files at work, so they would all the the same color and in the same font. So it's no surprise that when I got engaged, I wasted no time starting my Wedding Binder. Mark and I each snuck home some sheet protectors from work and he snagged me a big white binder. I spent the next couple of months filling it with pictures I had torn out of magazines and printed off wedding sites online. I got some dividers and made some sections, but it has already become such a mess that I've already abandoned it. It has no rhyme or reason anymore and filled with a lot of pictures and colors that I'm not even considering anymore.

Today I stumbled upon Russell and Hazel and fell in love in about 3 seconds. Their free PDF files of every list you could possibly need as you plan your wedding are pretty fabulous. Their binders and paper products are quite pricey, but I couldn't resist the black and white patterned binder and ordered it, telling myself that every bride deserves a nice Wedding Binder and this one will of course keep me right on track with all my planning. I cannot wait until it arrives in the mail!

Reasons I Hate Living in an Apartment: #712

The people who are currently living above me are loud. Really loud. Are they walking around wearing scuba flippers up there? I can hear them pounding around up there all hours of the day and night. Are the constantly dragging very large pieces of furniture across the floor? Hammering nails into the walls at 2 AM? Running laps around all 700 square feet of living space? I've started either keeping the TV turned up very loud or having my iPod plugged into my ears at all times. Which means I miss a lot of phone calls, but at least I can choose what is blasting in my ears.

End rant.

My weekend of absolutely zero plans other than laying around and perhaps painting Mark's kitchen didn't quite go as planned. Friday afternoon Mark's best friend from college called to let us know he was in town for a wedding and wanted to hang out. We were already discussing making dinner at home and heading up to Home Depot to look at paint colors when this little call threw a wrench into the whole plan. We still hit up the paint department, stared at the 1,000 different squares of color for about 20 minutes, finally blindly picked two and got samples, took them home and put them up in the walls and then Mark mowed the lawn while I feel asleep. Since we didn't hook up with his friend and his GF that night, we made it a point to see them Saturday. They were staying at the Gaylord out in Grapevine, so we met them up there and spent about six hours at the hotel's FABULOUS pool with a beach bag full of illegal cans of beer ($4.50 per drink at the bar? no thank you). We left with great tans and no desire whatsoever to pick back up the paintbrushes (although we do have about 5 different patches of colors on the walls currently: picking a color is so hard!) We went to bed early with plans of hitting up the paint department early this morning to makeup for our lost time.

But then, this morning when I checked my email, my friend and fellow Bride to Be had emailed to see if I wanted to go to the Dallas Bridal Show today. Woo! So I sent Mark on his way and told him he could paint the kitchen ANY color he wanted at this point, and I met Laura for lunch and an afternoon of DJ's, Latin Cover Bands, Cake samples galore, balloon arches, veils, free drawings for a wedding day makeover and about 280 different chair covers. Whew. It was really fun and also quite exhausting. By the last row of booths, our bags of giveaways and brochures were so heavy that we had the drag them out and we avoided eye contact with every vendor we passed. I did manage to sign up for a "free" facial from a Mary Kay consultant, create a registry at Bed, Bath and Beyond (with nothing on it yet?), and enter for a chance to win a Bachelorette Party at... get ready... Texas Motor Speedway. Oh joy. Laura informed me on our way out that she was giving everyone a fake phone number. Hmm. Smart.

But really, the bridal show was fun. I felt like I was a part of this exclusive "Bride to Be" club and like all the girls there had that same happy engagement glow. Plus, I did find some really cute bridal boutiques that I hadn't even heard of before, many of who I for sure want to go check out for dresses. And the lady at the LuLu's booth even snuck Laura and I one of her coveted coupons, even though she swore they were only for referrals. I think we smooth talked her pretty good :)

When I talked to Mark earlier tonight he hadn't made any paint decisions yet. He figured I needed to come be a part of the final decision. But one thing we do know - our little kitchen project will involve some chalk board paint. Stay tuned for that one!

365

One year from today, I will be GETTING MARRIED!!!!!! I am so excited that this one year mark has already come. Time really is flying by. Now I better get the ball rolling on the wedding planning. I can't use the "it's still over a year away" excuse any longer. My WP BFF is going up to Muenster with me in a couple weeks so we can start coming up with our grand design plan for the ever-so-dull church hall. We found out last week that we cannot hang anything from the ceilings in the hall (even though when we booked, I specifically asked if we could and was told yes, grr) so we're having to get even more creative now. My good friend (and b-maid) Stephanie called me late last night with her own personal solution to this dilemma, something she saw on the Martha Stewart Weddings cover.



Balloons! Huge balloons with little lights inside them, to make them glow. It could work. I'm going to look into it, along with WP BFF. Another option is to build some sort of HUGE arbor/canopy/tent to put over the dance floor, and hang lights and lanterns from it. My dad assures me that he will build me ANYTHING, so it's also on the list.

Tonight Mark and I are going to celebrate our Pre-Wedding Anniversary and let the countdown officially begin!

Is it the Weekend Yet? Oh wait, it still IS the weekend.

I know its still relatively early on Sunday and I can for sure tell people are still partying it up at my apartment pool (I can hear their shouts and splashes from my couch!) but I'm ready for this week to wrap up and move on to NEXT weekend. I LOVE the Fourth of July. I LOVE going to the lake. I'm only working three days this week (woo!), Mark's brother is coming home from Beijing for a little vacation on Thursday (woo!), we get to celebrate our engagement with him since we haven't seen him in months (woo!) and by Friday we'll be lounging on the boat/admiring the lake all weekend! Woo!

Changing subjects COMPLETELY, I saw My Sister's Keeper this afternoon with a couple friends. It was a good movie. It totally puts you into a family with a child dying from cancer and completely breaks your heart. But. Call me the "That's Not What Happened in the Book Police," but Hello?? That's not what happened in the book!! Please. Someone read the book and then go see the movie so we can hash it out.

And because I can't not talk about the wedding, here's the colors I'm leaning towards. We just can't pick anything that even remotely resembles OU crimson. That's Mark's only color request. I'm thinking something in the raisin shade for the b-maid dresses. That's not too OU is it?!



Now I should really go for a run at the gym. I've got my workout clothes and shoes on and everything. But ahhhh I. don't. want. to. Bah. I will though. Bah.

Umm.. this seems to be a reoccurring theme around here.

Hi. It's me.. again. Being a bad blogger.. again. It's not that I've been busy (although I have) or that I don't have things to write about (because I do) or that I'm not spending much time on the Internet (because oh lord, I am). I have no excuse. So once again, straight from my laptop, here's what's been going on over here for the past, oh fourteen days.

Well, most recently, Michael Jackson died. Whoa. So strange. I am enjoying the Tribute To Michael that every radio station in DFW has been playing this afternoon and omg MTV is playing all his old music videos. It almost made me jump on Itunes and buy his greatest hits album. But then I remembered that I AM TRYING TO SAVE MONEY for this (kind of) big deal that I have coming up... you know, the wedding.

So since I officially brought it up, the wedding. It has and hasn't been consuming me. I go through waves where all I want to do it sit online and read wedding blogs and look at wedding photos and agonize over colors and dresses and flowers and decor and DJ's and more more more. Then I have days that go by where I don't want to look at a single bride magazine or even talk about it. We did set a date though, which I'm hoping will be the most difficult decision I have to make because lordy, it was a tough one. Spring? Summer? May? June? July? April? Soon? Far? Middle? Ahh. We have officially booked the church, the reception and the photographer. July 10, 2010. I want it to be less than a year away. I think then I will be able to really feel like its okay to start hard core planning. Because right now, I feel like every vendor who asks me "so when is your wedding date?" is rolling their eyes internally as i try to casually say "oh next summer."

I am so excited for our photographer. So. Excited. Check out his work at www.brooksblog.com. Mark and I are chipping in to cover the costs of the photos because its something we are so excited about and we want to have great photos, naturally. What I didn't want, was for my photographer to take up a substantial part of the budget, so we're taking on a large portion of the photo costs, which doesn't bother me in the least.

I took two days off this week and went to look at dresses with my mom and sisters. I wasn't too jazzed for it, because of the whole my-wedding-is-over-a-year-away thing. But once I started putting those dresses on and once they'd pin the veil in my hair, it got really fun, really fast. I have a good idea of what I'm looking for now. I even found a potential THE dress. But, I've got so much time on my side still, it's just going to sit in the back of my mind, burning a hole until I start looking again. I am taking off more time in mid-July and Mark's mom is going to come up to look with us too.

I also found some FABULOUS bridesmaid dresses that are exactly what I had in my mind. My sisters got to try them on and they looked adorable. The designer is offering a great deal for Summer 2010 brides, so I will likely jump on these pretty soon. But, that requires me PICKING A COLOR. This is all my mom talks about. Colors, colors, colors. We cannot do ANYTHING until we have our colors, according to her. I am really torn on the colors. I have some great options - but I'm afraid of committing to one and ordering dresses and then not being able to go back! One thing I know I want is naturals, greens and whites in my flowers. Green hydrangeas. White peonies. Bright green leaves. So I need colors that will match that. My two front runners are deep royal blues and rich plums/raisin colors. The cute bmaid dresses that I found come in both shades, so I'm weighing my options and trying to sell myself on either one.

Over the weekend, I started working on creating a wedding website. It was quite addictive. More to come, once it gets some more beef to it.

Mark found out this week that HE PASSED HIS PE TEST!!!!!!!! Huge news over here. Finally, he can relax and stop stressing about this stinking test. We went out last night to celebrate with dinner at Texas de Brazil. This was my first time at this place. Let's just say that by the time we left, I wouldn't even let Mark say the word "meat." I was beyond full. But it was Fabulous.

How on earth is the fourth next weekend?! We are heading up to the lake and I cannot wait. We haven't gotten up there even once yet this summer and Mark's brother will be home from Beijing and coming along with us. It's the first time we've seen him since we got engaged (or any of Mark's friends for that matter) so we get to celebrate.. yet again! My favorite part of the summer is going to the lake.. I'm glad it's finally time!

We went to my parents' house last weekend to meet with the priest at the church where we'll be getting married, and to take one last look at the reception site. While we were there, my mom and I did crafts while the boys branded the cattle. Yeah. Branded cattle. No one knew what they were doing. It was horrible and hilarious all at the same time. Mark was covered in mud and cow poop and he has an awesome farmer's tan to show for it too.

Work has been going really great and we've got some fun events coming up this fall. Plus the summer hours are completely spoiling me. When school starts again in August, it's going to be a rude awakening.

It's hot in Dallas. Like really hot. Argh. I am enjoying some quality time at the pool though. This summer is flying by, like always.

Bride Wars

Today was a bit of a halt on my Recently Engaged Aura of Bliss. I had my mind set on a June wedding. I was going to be a June bride, I just hadn't booked the church or reception site to confirm the date, but I had my eye on June 12. Yesterday Mark and I met with a photographer, who I immediately fell in love with. He gave us the "you better pick your date and book us ASAP because we are filling up for next June" speech, so this morning I called the church and left a message with the Office Manger and then called up the reception site to get the scoop on their rules for decorating, just to solidify that it was THE place. Well their rules are nice and lax, but June 2010? Completely booked up! How does a town with a population of 1,500 already have a whole month of weddings booked up a year from now? I want to call up those small town brides and demand that they switch their dates for me!

As per usual, I teared up a little at this discovery. My entire idea of a June wedding went out the window. Now what? There is literally NO WHERE ELSE up there to have a reception. Believe you me. We have looked. And looked some more. Mark and I have said since looong before we got engaged that we wouldn't do a spring wedding. We hate the spring. The fall is just too close. I know I can physically plan a wedding in six months, but I really want a long engagement so I can spread out parties, showers and all the DIY craft projects I've got floating around in my head. Being engaged is fun. I want to milk it as long as I can.

But July? Ahh. That is SO far away. I don't want to rush and get to my wedding, but I do want to BE MARRIED already. Live in the same house as Mark. Get out of my lame-o apartment and move all my stuff up to his place. Have us come home to see each other EVERY DAY. So I cried on the phone to Mark and said yes I could wait until June 12, but July 10? I JUST CANNOT DO IT. He basically told me to sleep on it and see how I feel in the morning. I'm already gaining some perspective though. I can wait one more month to have that summer wedding I've been dreaming up for the past month. If we didn't go July, we'd bump it up to May 8, which would be exactly one year to the day that we got engaged. So it's either 11 months or 13 months. I can handle the extra two. I already emailed the photographer and (keep your fingers crossed!) if he's free I'll probably book it all tomorrow and finally have an answer to the "have you set a date yet?" question.

Oh and the very strangest part of my day was that I missed the return call from the church and checked my voicemail after dinner with my mom and sister today. It was from the priest at my parents' church. SOOOOOO weird. He sounded so serious. I am a little bit terrified of calling him back tomorrow. So intimidating!

Oh Goodness!

Where do I even begin? The longer I stay away from the blog, the more I dread coming back to it. It's hard to imagine that I will "catch up" on everything that I've neglected so far. But, here it is in a (lengthy) nutshell.

Since You've (I've) Been Gone:

I lost my still new-ish iPod, bought a new one, lost the new one, found the new one. Whew. Original one still MIA.

Went to Austin for a whirlwind Memorial Day weekend.

Got engaged. I think I may have mentioned that :)

Finished out the school year. Hooray for summer hours, short weeks and casual day everyday.

Resurrected the ol'Book Club. Picked the first new book. Read the first new book. Hosted the first new meeting. Started on Book 2 last night.

Spend a weekend with the future in-laws. Showed off the ring. Revisted the engagement site. Toasted over brunch.

Scoped out some reception sites in Muenster. It's slim pickings out there. But I believe in the power of good lighting and a lot of flowers.

Found a florist that I LOVE. Love, love, love.

Picked out about 28 bridesmaid dresses that I could be perfectly happy with. Haven't really thought too much about my own dress...

Set the date. Haven't 100% committed to it though. Spring Wedding? Summer Wedding? Winter wedding? I can't decide!!!!

Spent a weekend at a friend of a friend's lakehouse. It was cold and rainy, but we had a good time nonetheless.

Met with my BFF's mom twice since the engagement. BFF got married last fall and her mom did all the planning, so she's full of advice and tidbits. She's sending me almost daily emails with pages of information and ideas.

Started my Wedding Binder. So much fun!

Hired a wedding planner. Slash best friend. It's nice having a good friend with her own wedding planning business because she a)gives me a steal of a deal on her rates and b)"work expenses" our happy hours and picks up the tab

Will this blog take on a huge wedding planning theme now? Probably. Not entirely, but likely a lot. What else will I have on the brain for the next however many months?! Tonight Mark and I are meeting with a photographer to hear him out and get some prices. I am super stoked. The wedding photography is one of my most favorite parts of all of this, so I want to get me a good one.