Update Blog

I've been updating, folks. Adding in blogs with pictures from the last month as I've stumbled across them on my camera.

And I put them in date order. Even though I know some of you (cough, Justin and Jessica, cough!) hate that.

I won't add any that are from before April, so please forgive me and just scroll through, kplzthx?

Inappropriate Shoes

Alternate Title: Why marrying a designer is such hard work: Part two

I'm going to have yellow flats for my wedding shows. Here is my reasoning for this:
1) We're getting married on grass; heels have a propensity to sink in grass
2) I'm not planning on walking around on heels all day anyway... even when we're not standing on grass
3) Why would I spend hundreds of dollars on a pair of white satin strappy sandal things that I'll never wear again?
4) Nobody's going to see my feet anyway.
5) It's way more fun.


Chris agreed on all of the above terms, but mostly I think because on his search for wedding photographers, he's found fun pictures of the bright colored shoes hiding under girls' wedding dresses, and I'm sure he envisions this for our wedding picture portfolio.

So I went looking for yellow shoes at Payless on Saturday.

I found a pair of tiny heels instead. Yellow. Comfortable. Won't sink far into the grass. Twenty bucks. Perfect.

Sent the picture to Chris.

He hated them and proceeded to email me a list of approved yellow shoes. He said tiny heels are for four year olds. (?) His specifications are either real heels or no heel at all.

(This is me rolling my eyes.)

Here's his pre-approved list:

(Um, how are the heels I picked out any smaller than these ones?!)

(Okay, I like these ones.)

(And these ones. I think these might be the winners. Soooo comfy looking.)

(And these ones I found on my own!)

So I've got to make a trip back to Payless to return some four-year-old heels. Sadly, I'll have to pick out another pair of $20 shoes, since I used the heals to buy a BOGO pair of cute brown heels for work.

Sigh. Life is so hard marrying a designer.

But I suppose it's worth it. :)

OSF... revealed

I never got to the part of our proposal day where Chris threw me a huge surprise engagement party.


Basically, my wonderful, spectacular, challenge-accepting future husband decided that, not only was he going to make the proposal a complete and total surprise, but he was going to tell everyone important in our lives before he even did it, and still keep it a secret from me.


He is amazing. So's everyone else. I can't believe people knew for a month. My family. His family. Our roommates. Our best friends. Even my co-workers, who I am with every day, knew for a whole week before, and never said a word.


Really, it was freaking amazing that I was so completely in the dark.

This right here is a look of total and complete adoration. 

I give it to him a lot.

He really, really deserves it.

Us OSF's, with the guy who started it all- Ryan!

Chris and his amazing sister Sarah- who also played a hand in giving us a kick start. (You know what I mean if you saw the slideshow. If not, stay tuned for a link to the PDF of the slide show!)

Chris and his wonderful mother!

Sisters at the engagement party- I know, I know, you're all, "Who is that last person?" That's my older half sister, Jacqui. She's 9.5 years older than me, but we shared a room until I was 8. I always got stuck with the top bunk, which for some reason was in the middle of the room so that I almost got decapitated by the ceiling fan every night. (What were my parents thinking?)

Yeah, that's what comes to mind when I think of my older sister. Good times like the top bunk. :)

And you all know the lil' sis, Britt. She thinks she's all cool right now because she's just discovered that Jonathon Groff's cool. Oh, baby sis. I tried to get you to come to Spring Awakening with us many times last year. I suppose all it takes is one of them to land on Glee for her to get on board with the cool things in life. 

That was a big digression. Back to the party.

This, sadly, was probably how I looked all night. Shocked. Flitting from person to person with no real meaningful conversation. Telling the story fifteen times. ("And then Zach Quinto came down the stairs! And then Chris was sitting all weird! And then I had a ring on my hand, and now here I am with you!")

Okay, this is my favorite picture of the night. These five people here have a tradition, you see, we've got a picture from each wedding related event we've gone through. Sarah's. Mandy's. Sonia's. Hey, where's Sonia's? Sonia? I don't remember now.

But here's mine!

AND the best part is that right after I lamented how Mandy wasn't here for my turn at the roommate picture, Sarah whipped out a picture of Mandy (and David, but whatever) for the group pic. Totally thinking ahead that one- and now I have an awesome roommate engagement party picture!

Another favorite, and this one requires back story too.

Once upon a time there were four guys. Three of them were named Chris. And the other one was named Kris. The Chris' and Kris decided to all become best friends in fourth grade. 

As the years went by, they decided to start adding wives to their club. But poor Chris T. was stuck out in the cold for the longest time; he always made pictures asymmetrical with his lack of a female counterpart.

Then he met me and all was set right in the world of the Chris' (and Kris).

Isn't that a great story?

Here's one of my best friends, Sonia, of whom I apparently have no roommates-at-a-wedding pictures. Seriously, how did that oversight happen?

Okay, get ready for some cute. This is Jessica, Chris' cousin. You may remember her from Wii Boxing over the summer. She's pretty much the most adorable thing ever.

And she's going to be our most adorable ever flower girl!

Probably there won't be any Wii Boxing demonstrations, but maybe if you ask her nicely she'll show you her famous roundhouse run-in-place-and-punch-the-heck-out-of-the-air. 

My Woodman friends made it too! Michelle, Sandee, and Sandee's husband came down to celebrate with us, and even brought us wine and awesome picture frames... because Sandee knows I like me some pictures!

When all the hooplah was over, and our guests had left, we went down to the restaurant area of our party venue and had a late dinner with Chris' family. AND got to open up some neato presents from Chris' mom: our first wedding planner and the Groom Book. 

PS: That Groom Book is hilarious.

Oh, yeah! I lured you all in here with a promise to reveal the OSF acronym! It sure would've been mean of me to forget that, for those of you who weren't there for the big reveal at the party....

Yeah. Chris gave up the secret at our party. He had it in the slideshow he'd made for the night (which was AMAZING, but I can't figure out how to link it here!). Imagine my surprise when I'm telling the engagement story for the eleventh time, keeping an eye on the sliding slides that I hadn't seen yet, when he goes and REVEALS THE SECRET I PLANNED TO KEEP TO MY GRAVE. Or at least until our wedding. I was debating revealing it then. But Chris just went right ahead and told everyone.

But I know some of you weren't there. So for the sake of your sanity, I will go ahead and not only tell you what it means, but give you the exact context of its origins... this is a Fabulous Life exclusive, people: the never before read original beginnings of Chris and Jordan's friendship.

It all started on Facebook.

Chris Trementozzi January 16, 2009 at 1:17am

Hello Jordan! Ryan mentioned to me the other night that he showed you my little christmas gift, 365. Glad that you liked it. And no, obviously I haven't met you, but I know OF you. Ry has spoken about you on some of your little outings and what not, and I have seen you in his facebook pictures. We should all hang out sometime! I am always looking for good and awesome new friends! What do you do besides hug exotic animals in the wild?

Jordan Peck January 16, 2009 at 1:06pm

Hey, New Friend!

Awww, that Ryan’s a good guy. He talks about you, too, so I wonder why we haven’t ever all hung out in one big group? We’ll have to change that.

What do I do when I’m not hugging exotic animals?... Well, right now I’m trying to figure out why my work e-mail won’t accept incoming messages and deciding what would be a fun thing to upload to Blurb so I can get a sample of how good their books are. I’m also putting off going to the post office. :) When I’m not at work I’m either doing fun things with friends like Ryan or at home uploading pictures of the fun things we did.

I see you’re a fan of How I Met Your Mother, which means our friendship is officially solidified. :)

Chris Trementozzi January 16, 2009 at 2:17pm

Ryan is a very possessive and evil step-mother...he doesn't let me out of the house much...I usually have to much scrubbing, cleaning and laundry to do...but one day I'll get to go to the ball.

Ok, so I didn't know what Blurb was...it's amazing! At least it's pricing is. Being as I design books and various other things for work and play, I was impressed. I am interested in their quality also, let me know what you get. Maybe you could let me see what you get?

Where do you work?

Your a HIMYM fan too!?!?! Ryan got me hooked a long time ago after like the 3rd episode he watched or something...Idk exactly, my memory is fuzzy. But I LOVE it! Barney cracks me up.

Be in touch.

Offically solidified friend,

Chris

Jordan Peck January 16, 2009 at 4:09pm

OSF (Officially Solidified Friend),

Who doesn't like HIMYM? (Apart from those people who've never seen it and are living in ignorance.) Ryan never told me about HIMYM, but he claims after we all got hooked that he had mentioned it occasionally. My friend Justin kept bugging me to watch it, and then I housesat for him and he had seasons one and two, and I watched them both in one week. Then I stole them and made Brittany and our other roommate, Jenna, watch them, and now we are all obsessed. Marshall is one of my favorite fictional characters of all time. :)

Blurb is awesome, right? I've been working on making a blog book, but it's nowhere near done, and I wanted to see a test copy of one of their b&w books since we might be recommending them to a client of ours.

I work for a little consulting company called CTRG, but really I work for the owner, who just happens to be my friend Justin's dad. I've known their family a loooooooong time. Anyway, I do mostly admin work, but we also recently started a small publishing company on the side, because we were getting poor quality from the company who was designing our books. It's been way fun; I do the interior design and editing and Justin does the cover.

Which leads me to my questions about YOU designing books. What kind of books do you do? What kind of design do you do?

And that is my essay for this afternoon. Guess I'm off to the post office now. :)

OSF,

Jordan       

And that's the beginning of a beautiful friendship, if I do say so myself.

International Gathering of Bridezillas: San Diego Chapter

Also known as the Del Mar Bridal Bazaar.

Basically, we ate lots of cake and browsed flower displays while photographers, videographers, dj's, and wedding coordinators threw themselves at us.

(I throw myself at this guy every once in awhile. He likes it. Ssshhh. Don't tell anyone.)

The day was basically an excuse to take pictures of flower arrangements and steal ideas. 

By the end of the day, our complimentary Alfred Angelo bag was chalk full of wedding paraphernalia. Catalogs, fliers, photo booth prints...

Say what you will about the simplicity of carnations, I happen to find them marvelous. Especially when they're all bunched together like this. It's the symmetrical part of me feeling giddy.

Okay, I want to find these square, short vases in a pretty gray. It would make my wedding complete. Please tell me if you find them anywhere? Thanks.

It was literally exhausting. And I was hungry afterwards. So hungry, in face, I kind of felt like this guy:

He was hungry enough to eat the menus off the table at Miguel's. (Can you blame him, though, it's not like the waiter kept us supplied with chips or the yummy cheese dip all night?)

And, yes, that's Baby Holz. All grown up and distinguished now, isn't he? He was gracious enough to loan his parents to us to talk their ears off about wedding this and wedding that after the bridal show. Thanks, B. 

Mystery Project

The OSF went out and bought yellow paint. He pulled out a square canvas he's been saving since his college days in the art department.

What is that OSF up to, you ask?

You'll see... on September 20th.

Today I swam in white lace.

I met my mom and sister at David's Bridal for Round Two of the Search for The Dress (note the capitalized conjunction; we mean business here, people). Round One was a couple weeks ago with Sonia, Jenna, and Brittany. I wasn't allowed to post any pictures since a certain future husband reads the blog faithfully and refuses to see any and all wedding dress paraphernalia... at least the ones that I'm in. 


But as I went through the pictures from today's excursion, I found this little gem, taken by my baby sister, that is totally pre-husband approved. This is me in between dresses, which is why I'm merely peeking my head out of the dressing room. I believe this was between dress #5 and going back to dress #2. 


Dress #2 seems to be the crowd favorite around here. All the roommates loved it last time, and my mom and sister voted on it hands down today. I'm mostly thrilled that I can wear it in a size four. Let's keep it real, people.

Some happenings

Friday, April 2: Chris' first day off for Easter break, my fifth. We make a day of going down to Robbin's Brothers, not once, but twice, to deal with the ring fiasco, going to Chris' work, not once, but twice, for Chris to finish up some work from the day before, and for me to use Erin's computer to surf wedding blogs, and finishing off the day going to Coronado for Chris to see firsthand what the community center looks like. 

He liked it.

We booked it.

It was beautiful.

But he wouldn't stand still for a picture.

Saturday, April 3. Chris brought home from work the Pantone color swatches.

I hate these things. Really, really hate them.

Chris: Pick colors you like for the wedding!

Jordan: It's hard for me to pick off a piece of paper. I need to see the colors in texture and on fabrics.

Chris: But we need a base color to jump off of.

Jordan: Okay... grumble, grumble... but I'm just picking colors I like... I don't think they go together well for a wedding scenario. I'd still need to see them in real life....

Five minutes later....

Chris: You just picked all the lightest shades of blue! And Easter egg green and yellow!

Jordan: I told you this was a bad idea!

Chris: You are the worst color picker ever!

Jordan: I knew I should have made him sign my previously mentioned disclaimer. 

So if you leave knowing nothing else, know that the Pantone color swatches are evil and cause dissension in relationships.

Thursday, April 8. We get the contract for the site in the mail and with it comes... a layout of the room, complete with little punch outs of tables, chairs, and dance floors of all sizes. It was pretty sick, until we realized it all wasn't quite to scale, and neither Chris nor I can handle something like, but we had some fun with it anyway.

This is Chris' favorite layout: dance floors, all night, all over.

So little time...

... to keep this blog up to date with everything going on. There's wedding plan stories and teaching stories and homework stories and OSF stories... 


.... but tonight I'll leave you with just this one story: Picture the OSF, spending hours going through his itunes selection, in search for the perfect first dance song. 


He didn't find it. But he had a great time trying to sell me on the pros of dancing to "Sexy Back" and ghetto dancing to some Usher song. Oh, babe. You are too cute sometimes.




Happy 160 days until my wedding!

Things I Currently Love

Stephanie Williams' photography blog and her yellow and gray photo shoots.

Elise Blaha's blog. Her blog is currently devoted to DIY ideas for her own wedding, coming up at the end of this month.

Our (hopefully!) photographer's blog, Studio Castillero. This guy is a friend of Chris' co-worker Cody's, and just from reading his blog, I love him to death already. And his pictures are fabulous.

This blue bracelet. 

I want this blue bracelet. 

Who can tell me where this blue bracelet can be found?

There are two Sarah B's in my life...

... just discovered that today. 


Sarah B. #1 is used-to-be-a-roommate-at-the-Rancho-apartment Sarah who can be found here. 
Sarah B. #2, who I thought this whole time was Sarah B. #1 (for hopefully obvious reasons), is here. 


Sorry, Sarah B. #2 for confusing you with Sarah B. #1! 


I finally caught on with Sarah B. #2's comment about red bridesmaid's dresses... because I was thinking, "Wait a minute... Sarah B.'s bridesmaid's dresses were brown...." Then I scooted on over to new Sarah B.'s blog to see what she was all about. 


And now I wish I'd put more effort into St. Patrick's Day this year. The girl puts everyone to shame.


(Don't tell anyone, but I wasn't even wearing green... and the hair tie I was trying to pass off as teal was in fact blue. And I knew it.)

Things I look forward to during this engagement thingamajig:

1) Gift registries: Give me that scanner gun and take me to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, please!


2) Decluttering: I intend to bring nothing that is not either useful now or was important then into my new life and home. It'll be a fresh start of organized memories and only the clothes I actually wear, the makeup I actually use, and the high school notebooks with cute covers that were actually used as journals.


3) Learning compromise: I'm an idealist, but even I know that marriage isn't all smooth sailing. And even though Chris and I have never really had a fight before, I know we've got differences. And I know we both like to do things our own way. And I'd rather learn how to deal with that now, and utilize that knowledge later.

Just in case you didn't think my life was fabulous enough, guess what Chris and I found at the dollar bins in Target today? A wedding section. No joke, even though when I stumbled upon it and called for Chris, he too was thinking, "Wow, what a liar. Like there'd by a wedding section in the dollar... hey, look, there's a wedding section in the dollar bins!" The stuff had definitely been picked over, but we found what might be the most awesome thing anyone's ever found in the dollar bins: disposable wedding cameras. 

Oh, yeah. We got 20 of them. They only have 12 exposures each, not the standard 24, but they were a dollar. And we were going to have to round some up anyway since our party them is photographs.

Did I mention we've come up with a theme? Yep yep, we have! We decided to go with something that we both enjoy and that people think of when they think of things we like. (That was kind of a tongue twister... I'll wait while you re-read....) And everyone knows we both love photography! We will for sure be incorporating things like photo booths, pictures we've taken, childhood pictures, frames, and hopefully our still-unsure-if-it-works new Polaroid camera. 

It's going to be a pretty rocking party.

Today we headed back down to the Coronado Community Center to pay the first half of our rental agreement, only to find out they close at 5pm on Sundays, and we'd gotten there at 5:36. So we walked around to the water side and sat on the little stone wall outside our reception room and looked out at the water while we discussed some wedding ideas. It was super nice. Let's just hope September 20 is as pretty (but hopefully warmer). 

Oh, yeah, surprise! We changed our wedding date! What happened was that we had only planned to rent half the room, since we have the whole patio to accommodate guests too... and that would have dropped the price in half. But when we signed up for the Saturday that became available, November 13th, we found out you can only rent the whole room on Saturdays. No bueno for us. We'd rather spend the money on other things. So Chris proposed the idea of a Monday wedding, we considered, drew up a guest list, figured out it if people really loved us they would still come, and changed the date on Thursday. 

Funny story. Since I was working at the main office that afternoon, Chris called and spoke to our guy Steve about switching our date. Chris texted me we were good to go. Steve called five minutes later: "So, just wanted you to know I just talked with Chris... he wants to change your date from November 13 to September 20... just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page...." Poor Steve. He must get a lot of grooms calling to to up the date two months! Chris thought it was funny later.

Besides driving to Coronado and accomplishing nothing, we also tried Prevue in Grossmont Center since they are supposedly a carrier of these dresses we really like online. I now remember why I hate Prevue. The store is stuffed full of hot pink dresses and eighteen-year-old sales girls who ignore customers but yell out conversations to each other from behind racks of pink tulle infested hangers. Horrible customer service. And then they couldn't even find the catalog we needed. And then they were closing and we just gave up. I might try them again later in the week, when there should be some adults around.

But all was not lost since we scored those wedding cameras at Target. And that was all due to my beloved roommate Jenna, whose car we happened to park right next to when we arrived at the mall, and who we went looking for in Panera to see if she was studying, and who we found out was actually in the chocolate aisle at Target (for a school presentation of course). So because of Jenna we went to Target, found the cameras, and then walked through the shoe aisle while Chris made me try on all the shoes he liked, until we found a pair I liked and bought them.

Sigh. It's so hard having a fiance who insists I have nice things. (Just kidding, this could get fun.)

And that was our slightly eventful Sunday. I'm a little over the weekend right now. Too much homework and shopping and planning for me. I need my schedule back. (Until Tuesday when I'll be craving the weekend again.)

Happy 162 days until my wedding!

Marrying a designer is hard work.

No joke.


Chris and I have been coming up with more conflict in the last week than in our entire relationship. Apparently all this time when I thought we had the same ideas about everything, I was a little bit right and a little bit wrong. We do have the same ideas- just with different variations. And neither of us likes to back down, darn it!


But aside from all the "I feel that we need to come up with a rich accent color" and "I feel my blue is prettier than your blue" and "I feel you're color blind!" we don't hate each other (yet). And fortunately Mandy did warn me about all of this. Of course, I didn't really believe her... until now. 


But I still love that boy. No question about it. :)


We had an insanely busy Saturday today. Our only real plans were to go to the church rummage sale this morning, to look for fun wedding decor finds, and somehow it escalated into a trip to Michaels, lunch downtown, our reception site to take pictures of the tables, chairs, and corners of the room, down to South Bay to check out Paradise Hills (to see if we'd want to live there), out to Rancho San Diego, and to Friar Tux to check out their suit selection. Because we'd been up late the night before and woken up early for the rummage sale, I pretty much conked out upon our return home and enjoyed an hour long nap while Chris watched Where the Wild Things Are. Then it was back to wedding planning via blogs (we've got a new color scheme to match our new date!) and then a few hours of homework, broken up with watching the last half of an episode of Medium with his roommates when I went downstairs for a coke. 


While I've been doing homework, Chris has been spending hours on a blog update. I think it's his version of the proposal, and I'm super excited to read it from his vantage point. It still amazes me how awesome our proposal was, how perfectly surprised I was, and how he was able to keep it a secret from me for two whole months. Especially with me asking about it every other day.


We scored some good finds at the rummage sale- four or five glass apothecary like jars for the candy bar, which is what I'd been hoping to find for cheap (twenty-five cents!) and a Polaroid camera! It's looking like our theme is going to center around photography, and Chris had the idea last week to have a Polaroid camera on hand to take and add pictures to a display we want to set up. We're not entirely sure the camera works, and film for the thing is going to be a nightmare, but still! It was a cool find. 


Chris just got done with his blog, so I'm off to go read it now! I'll leave you with my current favorite inspiring picture: the yellow and gray wedding party!

Location, location, location.

Wow. What a week. I thought with it being spring break and all I'd get so much done. Turns out, not so much.


But.


We did get one thing done. And that thing was find and book a location for our wedding.


Say hello to Glorietta Bay, where if you will be attending our splenderific (splendid + wonderful + terrific) day, you will be staring out at if you look the OSF and I as we vow it up.

Yes, if you're lucky, one of those white wooden chairs will be yours... on November 13th!


I found this place on Tuesday, on a 10 Greatest Places to get Married in San Diego website. I was a bit skeptical at first, as this is a community center reception hall which tend to not be fantastic... and sometimes are painted funny colors and have linoleum floors. But this one is the Coronado Community Center, and since public building niceness is directly related to property taxes extracted from homeowners in the area, let's just say they're not doing so bad at the Coronado Community Center. 


Here's what the outside patio looks like at night.

Oh, yeah. Better come prepare to party.


Jenna drove down with me to check the place out on Wednesday, and we both loved it. 

Pause: Is my roommate not the cutest thing ever?

The view of the patio from the other side. It's right on the bay. Rad, right?

And here's me, approximately where Chris and I will be standing in 223 days. (That Jenna's adorable, but she can't focus a camera lens to save her life.)

Chris and I are very excited about this. We'd been talking with our guy over there, Steve, who'd let us in on the only available dates from here through November: July 23 (Friday, and really, really soon), October 31 (Sunday... and Halloween), and November 28 (Sunday, and sooooo far away). We were bummed about dates, but we were beginning to come around to Halloween... until the next day (Thursday) we called again and Steve told us November 13, a Saturday, had just become available.


Chris had Friday off (sort of), so we spent the day finishing up some work at his office (while I looked up wedding blogs on his co-worker's computer - sorry, Erin, for signing you out of Facebook!), going to Robbins Brothers twice (see the ring fiasco story coming soon), getting lunch, and finally getting to Coronado at 3:45 where we were supposed to meet Steve at 5:30.

We had some time to kill obviously, so we wandered around checking it all out. Eventually we went to talk to a couple guys manning the main desk, and turns out they could answer most of our questions about the room anyway, and took us on the deluxe tour. Then Steve showed up for his shift, and he turned out to be this guy who's our age, about to get married himself, and goes to Flood. We couldn't have asked for a nicer or more helpful guy.


So... we got our place! A little later in the year than we'd hoped, but at least that part's done. Now the rest of the planning can commence.


Here's Chris in our future wedding spot:

November 13, people!