Friday Freak Out!

Ahhhhh, freak out! Its friday, baby! Lets get our weekend on! And I hope all of you get to enjoy a long weekend with memorial day!

What am I going to be doing? Enjoying an early summer in MN with some biking, boating and sun bathing. mmm, yes! I heart summer hardcore! Nothing wedding related is planned and nothing wedding related is going to happen. Maybe my brain can follow along and take a wedding break.

Here with some awesome grooves and some awesome moves, I have !!! or Chk Chk Chk or whatever they are going by with Heart of Hearts. This song just makes me wanna dance! And ski. Since I found this song off the latest TGR ski video, Re:Session. (omg, I know I just got done talking about how awesome summer is, but I get a little lady-in-the-boat hardon watching these ski videos. So amazing!)

Enjoy the song and enjoy your weekend!

Deep Thoughts

I miss taking baths. I haven't lived in a place with a comfy bath tub since my parents house about 6+ years ago. All these claw tubs look cool, but really, that 90 degree angle in not soothing on my neck. I want to soak in a comfy tub and read a book and play in bubbles and have battles between the ninja turtles and my little ponies again.

This is now a requirement of our honeymoon: stay at least one night in a place with a bomb ass bath tub.

Raphael is ready.


Bubble monster via deysale

Porra!

I'm sorta taking a break from wedding land and may be a bit MIA for a while. I'm not stressing about anything right now and am feeling really great about the wedding - so that means I'm gonna ride this wave for as long as I can and try not to think about anything lest I stir up something that should have been left alone. :)

So today, in honor of the ridiculous heat and humidity here in the Twin Cities and because I don't have AC and definitely don't want to do any sort of cooking or heat inducing activity, I have a lovely recipe for you. Its a cold soup that require zero (or very little, depending) cooking!

My brother is currently living abroad in Spain and has been for a few years now. He used to live in a little town called La Roda where they served a nummy soup called porra.

Its a simple tomato based soup that is surprisingly refreshing and can be garnished with tons of various things to fit your taste. Here it is shown with some hard boiled egg and tuna (yeah, not the best looking picture...but it does taste good!). A friend of my brother sent this and she notes that this is a rough recipe from her memory. The amounts can be played with a lot to fit your taste.

What you need to make porra:

• Blender
• 2-3 slices of day old bread (or I just lightly toast some bread)
• roughly 6 medium size tomatoes
  
• half a red pepper
• 1 garlic clove
  
• few glugs of olive oil
• very small dash of vinegar (optional)
  
• salt to taste

Peel the tomatoes as best you can and cut into quarters. Peeling over the blender will keep all the juices for the soup. Also peel the red pepper as much as you can and cut into chunks. (I gave up very quickly on peeling the pepper and it didn't seem to make a difference. I haven't tried it with keeping the tomato skins yet.) Cut bread into smaller chunks. Chop up garlic. Watch out for both the garlic and the vinegar in this recipe - a little bit goes a long way!

Put everything (bread, tomatoes, pepper, garlic, oil, vinegar, salt) in the blender and blend until smooth. It should be thick - not runny like tomato soup. Chill in fridge and serve with your choice of condiments; hard-boiled egg, tuna, ham, prosciutto (delicious!), pepper, avocado...play around! Also great with a nice crusty baguette.

Hope this helps on those days where any additional heat in your house is too much! Let me know if you try it, what you think, and what you chose to garnish your soup with!

Bon appetit!
Jen

Friday Funky

Happy Friday, ya'll! I can't wait for what looks to be a sunny weekend here in MN! Some gardening, some grilling, some biking on our lovely network of trails, maybe getting some color on my poor pasty Minnesotan skin? Winters are rough on our complexions over here! But damn, when the summer comes, Minnesota and all its inhabitants are beautiful! For real! The more I travel the more I love my Twin Cities hometown!

Anyway. I'm feeling less bloggy lately, so maybe I'll make a new tradition with a dance dance party every Friday! If you are lucky like me, you can close your door or plug in your headphones and have a little chair boogie in your office!

Enjoy my new favorite song:

Gals got style and some smooth moves!

The In Laws

EEEEEK! Its the dreaded in laws!!! Run for you wedding lives!!!!!!!!

haha, jk! All dramatics aside, my in laws really aren't that bad and no, that is not my mother in law (but I still love the picture!). We have some troubles, but I feel like that is normal. Its another set of parents, so of course they are going to be trouble and cause wedding hassles. Its in their job description!

I get along with my in laws pretty well. We do have lots of differing opinions and should generally avoid serious discussions (aka politics, religion, what to eat for dinner...) unless we want them to turn into arguments, but for the most part it is a very amicable relationship. No BFFs or anything, but friendly.

Enter engagement and wedding planning. Suddenly there is a new and different and scary aspect of our relationship that I don't know how to react to. As I said before, most discussions turn heated with the in laws, so I was terrified of all the scary territory I was going to have to cross with them. For example: there was religion. We are not having a religious ceremony and this caused the in laws to be upset. We had talked about religion before but never in the context of ME personally and US as a couple or about OUR wedding. And I really didn't know how to deal with it.

Then there has been money. The guest list. Opinions on what we 'should' do or what is appropriate for a wedding. We haven't even gotten to the last name situation yet or details of our non religious ceremony or what-have you. All these important, big, defining topics. Being that my relationship with them has never been very personal, I was not sure how to suddenly deal with all these intensely personal issues with them.

And I think I kinda botched it. I was scared to approach these topics because I didn't want our wedding planning to involve yelling or hurt feelings. Which means I've been avoiding his parents. (A totally healthy way to deal with your problems, right? No, its not??? Whatever! I'm not listening to you anymore!) And I feel horrible about it!

From a really logistical standpoint, it has been easier to keep the wedding planning with a few key people. Aka Me, Mister, my Mama and my aunt, Franck. Four people provide enough opinions to get tangled together, so the less the better. But also, when you put money into a wedding (my parents are paying half) you get to have more say. There just can't be that many opinionated voices or bride go crazy.

So I didn't know how to navigate their involvement and left them out more than I perhaps should have. I would like them to be involved but I also want to avoid problems the best I can and do what I can now to avoid hurt feelings.

How do I involve the in laws without making them full wedding planning partners? Luckily, the major planning parts of our wedding are taken care of (venue, caterer) and now we are just left with lots of smaller sized projects to put together. Maybe I can ask for their input and help on one of these? That will include them without inviting a torrent of advice and opinions where I am not looking for advice or opinions.

Whats your in law situation? How are they involved with your wedding?

Note: While I haven't shared this blog with many of my 'real world' people, I'm still iffy on discussing people issues here. But I feel like I should be honest - and I won't post anything here unless I feel okay about the person its about finding it. Aka no bitchfests or gossip craziness. Which isn't me anyway, but we all have our moments!

DJ vs DIY

One of our bigger decisions has been to forgo a DJ and do our own wedding playlist on either an iPod or a laptop. There have been lots of nay sayers who tell me Why Using an iPod to DJ Your Own Wedding is a Horrible Idea (um, biased much?) but then there is Meg at A Practical Wedding who describes their self DJ experience and gives some great advice (I feel redundant for how often APW and the word "great" appear together).

I've been doing research and have some serious doubts about whether doing our own music is a good idea or not. Yet at the same time I don't really feel like adding another budget item to our list. So here is a pro/con list I've come up with of the biggest factors. Please feel free to weight in.

Pro Doing Our Own Music

• Free! Yeah, we are going to buy some songs and that does cost money, but most of it we have already. Plus, buying more awesome music doesn't sound that bad!
• No worries about a crazy DJ. Yeah, some are great, but some are nutso! And how do you know unless you have a good referral?
  

Cons of Doing Our Own Music

• Without someone to really watch the music, we lose the ability to adjust the music for what the guests are diggin and dancing to.
  
• The sound system at our venue. Its only one volume for the entire room. And when I'm dancing I want music pounding! So either music is pretty quiet or people can't talk on the seating side of the room. :(

So on one side I'm cheap and don't want to spend more money on a DJ. This wedding budget is a monster and keeps growing and growing. All these unexpected costs are coming up and are always more than I expect. I do have an old friend who is willing to do it for a reduced rate if he is still available. Reduced from 1000 to 600, so yeah, a good deal but still a lot of cash! On the other side, the music/dancing are the entertainment for the night and I'd like to do it right.

How do we manage the playlist without having to work our wedding? There isn't an obvious musical person to ask. My brother would be great for the role but he is hesitant and doesn't want to 'work all night' - which I don't want either! And what do you think about the sound levels? Does it really matter?

What are you doing for your wedding? Advice for DJing your own? Opinions on which works better?

Image from Hans Woltering

Our Wedding: Ceremony

We are finally putting together our ceremony and are enjoying the freedom of a non-religious, do whatever we want format. There are so many possibilities and its really fun to sort through our options and ideas to put together a ceremony that is going to be meaningful to us.

So far...this is what we have for our ceremony:
- Important people are seated, the four people standing up for us walk in, and then the Mister and I walk in together (or something)
- Our officiant (who is the father of one of my mister's best friends) says some sort of welcome
- Some cool people read something awesome that makes people think
- Some cool people read something awesome that makes people smile and cry
- Our officiant says a few more words
- We say some kind of vows
- We give each other rings
- We make ou...I mean, we kiss
- Exit to cocktail hour!

Is it sad that I feel really happy and like we've made great progress now that we have this extremely vague and totally nondescript outline?

Also, does anyone have some good readings? We went to Borders to browse through their love poems and all we found were extremely cheesy, epic poems that no one would be able to understand just listening to them. One reading that we are thinking about is from The Little Prince, a story I've loved for a long time, about taming and being tamed. Its adorable and has a cute little message. It also might be fun to have three people read it. One as the Little Prince, one as the fox and one as narrator.

So, any good, meaningful, not so cheesy and not so grand poems or readings about love/marriage/commitment out there?

Peeling Back Another Layer

Today, I reached a new and better place in wedding planning. Ok, so maybe that's premature to say... Today I saw a new and better place in wedding planning and I want to go to there! That place? Its called reality.

I think I once lived in reality. Sometime. Long long ago. Way before this engagement stuff and wedding planning. And since then, reality feels like a far away place told of by wedding graduates who have made it through to the promise land of marriage.

But for now I still live in Wedding Land, living in fear of the Wicked Witch of the WIC and being guided by the Good Witch, Blogda to the Wedding Zen City where the Wizard will make send me home to a blissful, love filled wedding...

Woah. Ok, that metaphor is getting crazy and needs to be put down!

So what I'm really trying to say is this: I've pulled myself away from the WIC and feel very successful in ridding myself of any pressure I feel to have a Martha worthy wedding. I can flip through a colossal bridal magazine and not be phased. I have not, however, learned to bypass the much more manageable but nevertheless intense expectations that are raised by blogs. Mainly, that we will all have a wedding where we are calm, happy, blissed out, totally in love, and supported by a loving community who helped put together this thoughtful day.

Focusing our energy on having this sort of wedding definitely is much better than focusing on a wedding worthy of a magazine spread, but it can still be stressful. Another Damn Wedding posted Friday on her hot pursuit of a blissed-out-couple-loving-spontaneous-community-based-love-fest wedding and I couldn't agree more.

There are many stories in blog land telling of a magical day where the bride wakes up and suddenly, all previous stress and wedding worries have been wiped away. The day then continues as the bride is blown away by all the support and community love her and her involved groom feel. And they live happily ever after!

I want that! I want to know that all the things that are going to stress me out will *WHOOSH* just go away as soon as I wake up on our wedding day. That my community of helpers will be the complete and assuring support that I need. I'm hopeful. I can envision that in my future. But what if blog land has led me to believe in some sort of crazy new idea of a perfectly unperfect day?

Talking to a recently married friend about all this, my friend suddenly says, "You know what? I didn't really like our wedding. I don't look back fondly at it. But that doesn't really matter anymore. We're just happy to be married!" Now, I think that is a great sentiment and I hope that, no matter what, I will simply be happy with getting married to a man who makes my insides smile.

But that's not quite the thing a gal wants to hear in the midst of planning...and in the midst of writing checks that are bigger than shes ever written in her life! I'm hanging on for dear life to this notion that our wedding is going to be an amazing blissed-out-couple-loving-spontaneous-community-based-love-fest. And I'm going to will it to happen.

Not in the crazy denial sense of willing something to happen against better judgment that that thing may not happy... I'm going to will it in the sense that if I wanna be blissed out? then I'm going to be blissed out! Unless some jumbo disaster occurs, I'm going to be rubber on my wedding day. And my wedding community can be my glue. Wedding stress will bounce off of me!

Is that still crazy denial of reality? I dunno. But I'm going to stick with this mad determination to have a great wedding. What alternative is there?

Question: Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you'd never found the wedding blogs? I am almost positive we would have eloped. I would not have had any grounding on which to build the wedding we are building. Would it have been better to elope? Maybe. Parts of me wish we had. But am I happy with our current wedding plans? Yes.

Music Makes You Lose Control

Last night I went through our entire music selection for HOURS to put together our preliminary playlists (more to come on this later). Phew! So much groovin and movin! Note: Its really hard to stay focused through so many bomb dance tracks!

I don't got much to say today, but I do want to share this...

I must learn some of those dance moves. So spunky!


*I was only a munchkin when this came out. So while I know the song...the video and dance moves are new and wonderful to me! I never knew what I was missing!** Have mercy on me while I go back in time and enjoy something many of you were aware of all this time!

**I have also discovered the Beatles in the last few years. They really do have some good stuff!

Too many weddings

We are at that age when every summer is full of weddings. And this summer, it feels very different to be a part of that. We are getting married, I will be in one, attending a hand full, and starting to hear talk of a wedding for two of our closest friends in the coming year. Its a very busy time!

I'm finding that it also adds a very difficult element to our planning. I've talked before about all the crazy expectations that come with planning a wedding and trying to stay true to our goals in the face of many differing (and very vocal) opinions. One side of the family thinks our wedding isn't going to be formal enough ("This is your wedding, Jen! Not a child's birthday party!") while the other side can't believe what we are spending and that we are having such a "large" wedding. All very encouraging, thanks families.

And as our wedding represents, we fall somewhere smack in the middle. Our 94 person guest list is the right size for us and includes all of our first ring relatives and close friends. We definitely hurt some feelings and drew some uncomfortable lines to keep it that small, but its what we choose. And I don't feel like its a large group or a really small group. Its just right! (This guest list is too big! This guest list is too small! This guest list is juuuuust right!)

Our budget reflects what we wanted as well. Meaning: a full meal, a place to eat that food, a photographer, a white dress, a suit, and some things mixed in that look pretty. We luckily have the means and partial financial support from my parents to do this and will not go into debt for our wedding. The budget definitely got bigger than we imagined...but we found out very quickly into the planning that the budget we imagined was not realistic for what we wanted. We are sacrificing money instead of sacrificing a day that will represent us and be meaningful to us. *insert cheesy phrase here about making memories to last a lifetime or something*

All these decisions were made with care to fit us as a couple in this particular moment in our relationship and lives.

Enter the wedding season.

I've been talking to a friend of mine whose wedding will be in July. Inevitably, weddings are the major portion of our conversations, but I try to avoid it as much as possible. We are having very different weddings and I want to avoid comparisons. Me comparing our wedding to theirs and her doing the same.

But once wedding season gets into full gear I don't know how to avoid it. I'm scared of attending weddings this summer, seeing what they did, and feeling the expectations all over again. On the flip side, I DO think our wedding is going to be completely awesome...and I don't want to share awesome details that we are doing in case it sounds like "oh yeah? check out what we're doing! isn't that GREAT?" or that I'm gloating about ours.

Anyone else dealt or dealing with this? Advice on how to avoid comparing weddings?

Projects: Tree Cookie Escort Card Holders

Its that time in the planning where I actually have to do stuff. Yeah, I've been planning a lot, but so far that has seemed to mean lots of conversations, googling, reading lots of blogs, stashing away of ideas, e-mailing, meeting with people, standing in one place as they make my dress fit, swiping my money card, oohing and ahhing and that's about it. Now its time to bust out all my crafty ideas, pick and choose, and DO them! Yay!

And I'm going to pay it forward. Since most of my ideas have been in some way based off blog land amazingness, I'm going to post my own DIY posts to share what those inspirations have led to.

First up - some really adorable (if I do say so) and really easy (honestly!) and really cheap (best part!) Tree Cookie Escort Card Holders!* This particular project was inspired by an awesome escort card box from The Brides Cafe. I loved the look of the mossy box but am generally creeped out by styrofoam, so I took the idea and tweaked it just enough to work for us.

Behold our tree cookie escort card holders!


Our cookies are fresh cut and not sanded at all, so they are still rough - and that's the way we like them! Natural and cute! And totally vibing with our quasi tree theme for the wedding.

To make your own** adorable tree cookie escort card holders, here is a quick and easy tutorial:

Materials needed:

• Tree cookies! and lots of them! We found a baby tree in the woods, chopped it down and then used the mister's dad's circular saw to quickly buzz off a bunch of cookies. The size can really vary. Some of ours are 2 inches in diameter while some are 1 inch. I'd recommend at least 3/4 inch thick.
• Wire - Choose any color (we used copper) around 18 gauge. You can find this in craft or hardware stores. We got two packages to equal 50 feet for roughly five bucks.
  
• Wire cutter
• Round nose plier - other small pliers can be used, but the round is extremely helpful in twisting the wire (both the cutter and the plier I had gotten from a craft store for pretty cheap)
  
• A drill with a tiny drill bit to match the gauge of the wire - Err on the side of small when it comes to the bit. You can use glue to secure the wire, but its better if its snug. OR instead of a drill - just use really soft wood. Our cookies were half basswood and I could easily push the wire into the wood for a secure fit.
• Sticky icky glue. Even Elmers will do.
  

Step One: Cut wire to length. I cut ours to approximately 4 inches long. I like the look of varied lengths, though, so I was nowhere near exact.
Step Two: Use the round nose pliers to twist wire into curly head. I found it easiest to curl it into a conical sort of shape (see picture below) (Its easier to maneuver and twist the curve while its spread out instead of flat) and then smoosh it flat with your fingers. The 18 gauge wire is still really malleable and easy to shape with your fingers. When shaped in a nice twirl, test that a piece of paper will be securely held - tweak as needed.

Step Three: Drill hole in wood cookie. Put a little bit of glue at the end of the wire and put in cookie hole. Leave to dry. Or, if you were able to find a soft wood such as basswood, simply push the wire into the cookie.
Step Four: Sit back and admire.


Easy, right? I put together the first five in less than five minutes, so give me an episode or two of Bones and I'll be set! I love projects that look way craftier than they really are! And cheap! In total, this cost us a whopping five bucks - that's just for the wire since we already had the other tools that we used. Score team us!

One DIY project done. Next is making some fun and colorful garlands!

Peace,
Jen

Note from the editor: this is now a totally DIT (do it together) project. The mister cut the cookies and just finished twisting all the wire into cute lil' curls. And then he made this awesome heart version just for me! :) awww


* OK, I felt kinda douchy writing that. "escort card holders" ew. That sounds like some sort of totally unnecessary thing the knot would push for a eight bucks each, doesn't it? Well, we do need escort cards to indicate our guests' meal choice. And we were originally going to just do plain tent cards, but this is so easy and so cheap that we're doing it. High return for our investments! score!

** or if your wedding is after 8-28-10, let me know and I'll ship them

Our Video STD

Since starting this blog, I've been a little top secretive. I don't really like putting much of myself out there on the interwebs and have generally kept this pretty anonymous. But as we continue along in planning, there are a lot of things we have done or are going to be doing that I'd like to share more of.

This includes all of our DIY stuff. Which isn't too much, really. I'm pretty lazy but I'm also pretty cheap...so we are doing a few really easy, cheap DIY projects and I should share! Because I scoured blog land for ideas and then modified them to fit our needs. So now I have 'new' projects to put out into blog land that hopefully someone else can use or take and modify for themselves! Blog land, I love you!

So our first DIY project was our Save the Date. I didn't want to spend any money on paper STDs -not a big priority item for us- so we decided to make a video. There are so many cute options out there and after some brainstorming this is what we came up with:

Our Video STD
(Not sure what the problem was with the embedded video. It was too big and ate up the right side of the blog! So with no time to trouble shoot, you just get this link!)

Yup! That is us - all bundled up for February in Minnesota! And now the secret is out! You know our NAMES!!! and what city we are in!!! AHH!!! ;)

I should also talk about the process we used to actually send out the video. Once we posted it to YouTube we were very careful to keep it under wraps until we were ready. We gathered everyone's e-mail, crafted a STD e-mail and then sent them out. The e-mails were sent out just as paper STDs would be - to individuals/families/couples and addressed accordingly. So they would read "Ms. Cake and Guest" or "Glaze Family" so that they knew who was invited, that kids could come along and all that other etiquette jazz.

The e-mail read like this:

Ms. Cake and Guest,
Brett and Jenna are getting married! And we want you there to celebrate with us, so save the date!

View your Save the Date here (insert link to our wedding blog)on our wedding blog. Invitations will be in the mail as the wedding nears, but until then you can keep track on the blog! Ceremony and reception will be held on August 28th, 2010 in St. Paul, MN.

Can't wait to see you there!
Jenna and Brett

Our last concern that, being the internet, people who were not invited might see the STD and be all "Can't wait! Yay!" and an awkward moment would then follow. We wanted to make sure only we sent it out to only those people who were invited. We showed them to our parents and the first thing both of our fathers said was, "Oh! This is great! I'm going to send it to everyone!" wtf? NO! Do not do that, papas! So first, we limited it being sent out only by us. Then, we didn't give out much info in the STD - like time or location - so no unexpected guests would show up. Finally, we included a note under the STD on our wedding blog. It read, "Please note that this video is intended for invited guests who received this from Brett or Jenna personally." Hopefully this will all ward off unexpected guests and help avoid any misunderstandings or hurt feelings. so far so good!

The song is Love by G. Love

Oh bugger

I had to order my dress in a size up because my hips were just a teeny bit big for the size that otherwise fit me perfectly. So dress was jumbo on me! Like...boobs would fall out all over the place if I didn't hold it up. Not good.

But it led to a fun little joke at work where I would snack on all goodies brought in (which there are a TON of! Thursdays are specifically donut days but there seems to be some sort of cake, cookies, breads, or other nummy treats all the time! Its great/horrible.) and as I walked out of the main office with a jumbo slice of choco cake goodness I'd say, "Well, gotta fit into my dress!" They thought it was great and were soon encouraging me and pushing all the num nums on me and saying, "We're just helping to make sure you'll fit into your dress!" It was great and delicious fun!

But now its all ruined. I had my dress fitting last Friday and so the dress will actually stay up and not make all the guests gasp. No more eating cake without guilt. Now I'll just have to deal with that guilt. Bummer.

Wedding Represent!

I was having a fit of insecurities about the wedding yesterday. One moment I’m worried that our wedding will be judged too cheap, us too lazy, or the style too “whimsical”.* The next, I feel like its turning into some formal, boring, stuffy, soulless, totally not unique wedding. I worried about regretting decisions, about not feeling like our wedding represents us well enough, and about spending all this money for nothing. Pretty much just a hot mess of worry where the worry is like wedding acid and disintegrates all happy thoughts and not even my beloved garlands are safe!**

Mid mild freak out, I was clinging to any and every sincere piece of our wedding I could find. The ring warming ceremony. The awesome charity favor idea that we are doing instead of useless crap. The awesome, concise guest list that we retained total control over. The two amazing ladies I will have standing up for me. These pieces that I feel good/great about and am excited for were like my wedding security blanket.

But I'm sick of fight back wedding insecurities. Its silly, annoying, and not productive. Insecurities do not check things off the Mondo To-Do List! So insecurities really just need to die. Die and never come back.

They are not dead yet, but I'm working on it. And here for you today I have the top 10 things I've learned to battle insecurities:

1) Remember that I'm marrying a completely amazing guy. Total win for me! Beat that, insecurities!
2) We wanted a big, fun party and that's what we are doing. And because this big, fun party is our wedding...well, its going to look a lot like traditional weddings. Whether we feel 'traditional' or not, that's part of the wedding territory.
2.5) because wedding = tradition. By extension: our wedding = traditional.
3) We are going to have 90 or so guests at our wedding. This means mixing lots of different family and friends. I'm pretty sure ALL of them will disagree with at least one of our choices for the day. But our goal is not to please them. Our goal is to have a meaningful wedding for us.
4) Its ok that they will disagree with at least one of our choices for the day. That doesn't mean they are going to look down on us. Different choices for different people.
5) If they do look down on us, they are weenie heads.
6) This is the first wedding I've ever planned (and I hope the last *crosses fingers*) and don't really know whats going on most of the time. I'm learning as I go and making lots of it up as I go. So me, give self a break.
7) Of all the important details, I have control over the most important of all. My mood. If I don't want to be upset, I don't have to be. Magic.
8) All the details are meant to set a celebratory mood and the detail that does that best? A couple who is giddy with love and excitement and beaming smiles wins over any arrangement of flowers or vintage anything.
9) The wedding planning - fun parts, stressful parts, insecurities, all of it! - is a great learning experience. Ya know...the whole "whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" bit.
10) And again - WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!!!!!! Eff the rest! WEEEEEE!!!!!!

* Story: I was getting together with my mom and two of my aunts. Before I had arrived, they had put together two mock up tall centerpieces. One was something my aunts came up with and was very beautiful and could have come straight out of Martha Stewart Weddings. The other was based on the ideas I had been throwing around and was very colorful and different. They showed them off to me, compare and contrast, pros and cons, and then one of my aunts asked, "Ok, so which one do you like? This one, which is very classic and elegant... or this one... which is... well, lets call it 'whimsical'." (with disapproving tone on "whimsical") Can you guess which one was the creation of my brainstorming and creative, cheapskate juices? Can you guess which one I picked and which one we are going with for the wedding? Can you guess how auntie wrinkled her nose at my proclamation that whimsical was the complete winner over Martha inspired centerpiece? le sigh.

** Over dramatic much?

Fridays Rock My Socks

I'm so happy to see Friday. Work has been crazy. A rainy MN day is making me want to go back to bed hardcore. And the wedding is weighing me down. I have a mondo to-do list that I haven't even looked at in ages and don't quite know where to start on. I feel in a good place as far as the wedding, but right now I just want it to be here so we can get this marriage show on the road!

Hence my less than thoughtful posts of late. Shoes! Necklaces! Rings! And yesterday, a very successful first dress fitting with an adorable little lady who is possibly two feet shorter than me and who I am so happy to give my dress to to make it go from giant white sack to slim and trim beauty! (Oh, and by the way...I introduced the dress to green pearl necklace. They are unsure about each other but could be great friends once they get acquainted better. I also introduced the dress to these metallic sandals that I picked up. WOAH. They HATE each other and had to be separated immediately lest some fighting break out! It was terrible.)

So instead of thoughtful wedding land critiques or insights, I'm jumping on board with posting on non wedding real person stuff.

Non wedding things happening in my life:
- Trying to navigate an awesome job where I have been for almost two years now but just got the hang of a few months back. It was a new position when I came in where I am the one person communications team for a department at the University. Aka so much to do and so little time.
- Planning for marriage. What will that mean for us? At the moment we are not a fully integrated couple. We are still two individuals with lots of stake in each other, but I'm looking forward to joining together more in our finances, planning, car ownership, insurance, and all the good stuff!
- Wanting to MOVE. We've both lived in MN our entire lives and have wanted to move out west since I graduated college a couple of years back. An awesome job got in the way (yeah, rough, I know) and then the engagement/wedding came and put off our moving plans. As soon as thats done, I want to GO, get some new scenery, some mountains, and awesome skiing!
- When we move, I have no idea what sort of direction I want to aim my career in.
- Getting in shape. Trying to figure out a lifestyle that I can keep up and that will keep my healthy. Less lazy butt. More buns o' steel!
- I wanna cook and bake more. Which might conflict with the above...
- Enjoying summer! I can't frickin wait for Minnesota to get in gear and summer to come! Summer grilling, boating, laying in sun, biking on all of the awesome bike trails in the Twin Cities, canoe trips down the river, river tubing, weekends at the cabin, AAHH!!! I LOVE SUMMER!!!!

(I'm going to push this rainy, gloomy day away are just stare at this picture all day, dreaming about summer. This is from a past canoe trip down the gorgeous St. Croix River.)

Whats going on in your non-wedding life? Here's hoping this Friday rocks all of your socks as well. Peace!

Our Wedding: Sassy flats

Its time.

For shoes.

I've been doing shoe dances, praying to the shoe goddesses, making offerings to the shoe winds, and anything else I can think of to make this process go smoothly. I am hoping the heavens take pity on me and send me something beautiful!

I'm a pretty picky shoe shopper and am not looking forward to shoe shopping for the wedding. But at the same time, I'm excited for wedding shoes. This is another avenue where I can tone down the big bridal of my dress and add some fun and spunk. I've been coming up with some candidates online - though I've never successfully ordered shoes offline and I'm guessing I'm going to end up ordering a bunch and then returning a bunch... but whatever. If that's the sacrifice the shoe goddesses demand.

My criteria is as follows:
1) Flat - Me and heels are not friends. I'm roughly six feet tall and I'd prefer not to feel like a scary giant or to be breaking an ankle at my wedding! Kudos to tall gals that can rock the heels - but its not me at all.
2) Comfy - I'm Practical with a capital P when it comes to shoes.
3) Preferably colorful - I would just die if I could find a wonderful granny smith green shoe! mmmmm, green...
4) Not be flip flops that will go *flip flop* down the aisle.
5) Look at least a little bit formal. But really I don't care that much...just not flip flops.
6) Oh and I don't want to take a loan out for my shoes.

I'm going to go do some shopping one of these days, but so far, I've got a few contenders online.
A) Comfy looking green "Light on Your Feet" Seychelles.
B) Some pinkie Gee WaWa sandals (awesome name, by the way) that would be my big spender shoes at $139. They look like a mix between sandals and flats...interesting...
C) Simple, "something blue" (or pink), well priced DV by Dolce sandals
D) Pinkie leather sandals that look like they'd be hella easy on the feet...and have lost some style because of it
E) Simple, green, sandals by Laundry Common that look totally 'me'. Aka functional, bare bones, with a little bit of styling that doesn't make a huge statement but is enough. The color of green is highly approved of.
G) I could open it up to fun metallics and get these beauties or I could just go with every color there is and be done with it! :)

Phew! Thats way too many shoes for a non-shoe gal like me.

What is your vote? Any others you want to throw into the runnings? And do you have your wedding shoes yet?

Photo from David@UNT

Our Wedding: Rings!!!

I'm so excited! We went to the jewelers on Friday and got our wedding bands!!! WEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!

Mine is going to be a plain band* that matches my engagement ring, and the mister got this sweet band that has a hammered texture down the middle and with smooth borders. Like this:
Buying our rings felt like a really great step towards finally be MARRIED! I can't wait! And seeing that ring on his finger when he tried it on just made me beam. Not that I need to lay claim to my man or anything, but that ring just makes me think "DIBS!" Really official dibs! Hes mine and I couldn't be luckier!

Yay for wedding highs!

*Apparently they don't really do plain bands anymore. We went in once and they only had three plain wedding bands for women. Three! wtf!? And none of these three matched the non-rounded/non-domed shape of my engagement ring, so the lady recommended we come back this past weekend because a bunch of vendors were going to be there so the selection would be better. We went back and this time they had five. double wtf!?