Making progress!

Wow, it's been a LONG time. Whoops.

Over Christmas we did some chatting and planning verbally, but with the holidays everything, nothing was secured. However, we're moving forward quickly now that we're officially into the year of our wedding (ooh ,that's weird to say).

We're honing in on our rentals, figuring out exactly what the ladies are going to be wearing, and most excitingly, making our registries!

We've decided on three things. One, we're indicating our interest in remodeling our kitchen, and our desire to patronize Jerry's (a local large hardware store). Two, we've registered at Sears for a few appliance type things (most specifically a serger, they were the only wedding registry type place that had them!)

And finally, we've settled on Macy's. Part of me really didn't want to choose them. EVERYONE registers at Macy's . It's so cliche, and so... traditional. I wanted to register at Down to Earth, a local home store, or some where like JC Penny, a more ... I don't know... every man type store. I grew up shopping at Penny's, it's familiar, I like it! But after checking around and looking at our options Macy's just really made it hard to say no.

The Fiesta ware was a big selling point too! Yes, that's right we're registering for Fiesta dishes. I had sort of avoided that option. My mother has Fiesta ware, and I felt that if I chose them too it would be like I was copying her, or only doing it because she did it. But it was Luke's idea, so I LOVE it.

Anyways, we haven't actually started our registry yet, because they have an event coming up which actually sounds like a ton of fun.

They're doing a 'Sip & Scan' at which they are going to have drinks, hors d'oeuvres, vendors, and other fun stuff. Plus, we get to walk around the store shopping for stuff that we don't have to pay for, always fun. They're going to be doing free point and shoot engagement shots, and more. If we do this, we are also entered in a drawing for gift card. Outside of the event, simply registering at Macy's has a lot more incentives, 10% off everything for 90 days after the wedding, plus we earn store cred at a rate of 5% the value of gifts purchased. Penny's had nothing to offer. So, I guess what i'm saying, is I understand why everyone registers as Macy's!

To Blog or Not To Blog...

I applied awhile back to be a 'Bridal Bud' for the BridalBuds website. It's a bridal community. Think WeddingBee, I thought it was sort of independent and smallish. They turned me down because my wedding was more then a year away, so awhile back I applied again. This time I was accepted, but now I'm not sure I want to do it.

First of all, they're less small then I thought. Seems that they are run by a company that is associated in some way with Martha Steward, facebook, iPhone and WeddingWire. So definitely part of the whole WiC thing...

Also, you guys know, I've not been updating like a good blogger should. I would need to write 2-3 entries a week. But then, I don't just get to post them myself, I submit them to their editors, and hope for the best. I've never been a fan of censorship, but on the other hand, it might not be that way. If I were running a website like that, I'd want to see why my bloggers were publishing too.

The third big hurdle is I have to fax in my signed agreement form. I don't have a fax machine. I'm not even sure where I'd go to fax something....

So, any opinions?

Second Reception, in the works!

Over the Holiday weekend we talked with both of our families some about the wedding. Luke's mom especially had a bunch of ideas to share with us.

We've been dealing with this issues of the guest list. I may have mentioned before that my super power is that I know everyone. On top of that we both have large families, and we see our wedding as the excuse to throw a big party (something we love to do anyways!).

This has resulted in a long guest list, minimum of 300. Now we know that not all of these people will come, whats the rule of thumb? Two thirds of the folks who you invite will come? But Zanne, Luke's mom, came up with a great idea! There are a lot of people (who have large families) that are friends of Luke's from his church up in Corvallis. They are people who perhaps were a large part of Luke's life as a child, but are less so now. Many of them have more of a relationship with his parents, then with him.

So instead of inviting many of those church folk, his parents have offered to host a receptions especially for the people from their church after we return from our honeymoon. That way we can still celebrate with them, but not invite them to the wedding. This is a great compromise because I know Luke was really struggling choosing who to invite to the wedding from the church and who not it. It's not a large church, which means that everyone knows each other well, but it's big enough to be one of the largest groups of people on our list.

I'm so relieved to have a solution to help us pare down that list. I mean, I'm glad to be having a large wedding, but seeing all those names is a little overwhelming, and I know we wouldn't be able to chat with each of them individually!

Bonus? I get to wear my wedding dress again!

Wedding is about marriage and what you do with it

I don't want to be one of those couples that sits when we're old wishing we'd done things differently when we were young. Up was an adorable movie, but I somehow doubt I'll get my house to fly up and away to South America when I'm old, a widow and lonely.

Do it now. That's partially why we're insisting on going to Europe for our honeymoon, despite that fact that it may or may not be the most financially sound decision, but it's what we're doing and damnit, we're going to love every minute of it.

Meg at A Practical Wedding pointed me towards a blogger names Lauren who made a post about living without your partner some day. I think she really hit the nail on the head in a discussion with her husband about their finances: Lauren posted this about planning a budget with her new husband:

We also set a savings goal that would make us both feel comfortable with any emergencies that came up (after buying a house and paying for a wedding in one year, our savings is severely crippled.) We figured out how long it would take to reach that goal, and then Jeff said "So, should we not travel until we reach our goal?" My response was "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Buying a fridge- sure, we can wait on that. But traveling, exploring, experiencing new things together- non-negotiable. I don't care HOW little money is in our bank account.

So here is to traveling, exploring and experiencing new things with my new husband!

Two for Tea, Alone!

Now, I wouldn't spend $35 on a cake topper, in fact I don't even know if we will have a cake topper. But this is adorable. From WeddingCollectibles.com

Inspiration Board

I'm not a graphics type person. I don't even own software that COULD do graphics, if I had the skills. So I haven't really bothered with an inspiration board, however I just came across this nifty tool that allows you to upload your own pictures to use in an inspiration board, it's fairly basic, but I was able to put together ideas


The board can be found here

Feel free to make you own!

Leaving On A Jet Plane...

Recently I have shifted my planning focus from wedding to Honeymoon!

Luke and I have decided we want to travel in Europe for (most) of the month of August following our July 31st wedding. In an effort to get out of his hair for an hour while he was writing a paper last week I went by our local library and picked up a ton of guidebooks. The first one I read was Rough Guide's First Time Europe. I LOVED it. There is some issue with this book as it's and older edition, printed in 2003, the year of my LAST European tour. Some stuff is out of date, especially in regards to the internet, but it's a great resource none-the less. They seem to have a newer edition from 2007, but I think it's written by a different person.


I've been to Europe before, but it was part of a choral tour. We had a very strict schedule and all travel and accommodations (and most of our sightseeing) was arranged ahead of time for us. I was also only 18. So this feels like my first trip to Europe, or at least, my first trip I'm planning for Europe.

We will visit Britain, France and Italy (we only have from the 2nd of August until about the 23rd), and we'd like to balance our time between the three countries. We're doing this the cheap way, so a lot of hostels, the old backpacking backpack, cooking our own food as much as possible, with a few deviations so it still feels like a honeymoon! After finishing the First Time Europe book, I've realized that there are three major purchases that are necessary before next summer.

1) A backpack. Last time I was in Europe I had a suitcase, which is a great suitcase, but we were in tour buses that dropped us off mere feet from our 4 or 5 star hotel. Not happening this time, we'll be walking/busing/train-ing from place to place. Apparently they don't really make external frame bags any longer? We went to R.E.I., and I got fitted, this is the bag that seemed to suit my needs the most. It's currently on sale, but there is a used gear event next weekend that we want to check out.



2) A good pair of walking shoes (and sandles?). I don't have a good pair of tennis shoes right now. Just a simple fact. Definitely going to want those. I also need to decide if I want to invest in a pair of Chakos or Tevas or some other active wear sandal rather rely on flip flops. I tend to be very comfortable in flip flops, especially my favorite Reefs, but I anticipate that we'll be doing a lot of walking. Can anyone recommend a type of shoe I should look into? I appreciate any advice that you have on this account since there are
SO MANY options!

3) A camera. In my over-exuberance at a recent trip to the beach my beloved little camera fell out of my pocket and into the ocean. It did not recover. I'm making due with my day to day photo needs by using an old digital that a friend gave me. It is not a very nice camera, and it requires AA batteries, something I'd like to avoid. I clearly need a better ( and smaller?) camera for this vacation as last time I went to Europe I didn't own a digital camera and ended up taking hardly any pictures, well, I took a lot of pictures, but not nearly enough and many of the images of monuments or art exhibits didn't turn out as well as I'd like. This is another area where I'd love some advice. I had a little fujifilm camera that I loved before it went swimming, but it's zoom wasn't as powerful as I may have liked. It had a lot of modes that I really appreciated including a museum mode that had no sounds or flash, a must for a trip to Europe! I've considered simply purchasing the same camera again, but I'm open to other suggestions too!