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So I'm getting married today.

Crazy.

As I'd said in an earlier post, with the beginning of a new life ahead of me, I'm beginning a new chapter with a new blog. This one will still be up and running, with links to the new blog and links to previous blogs, and the new blog will have links back here and to the others.

It's very exciting, I know.

Also exciting? I'm marrying my very best friend later today. In about... 16 hours.

This weekend's been fantastic so far. Friday night we met up with Kris Cowen for dinner and general fraternizing until midnight. Saturday I did most of my packing for our trip to Hawaii before heading to my bachelorette party. I wish I had the pictures, but I've left my camera at the other apartment. :( Maybe I'll have time on the plane to go through them.... no, wait, I'll definitely have time on the plane to go through them. Trips to Hawaii ain't quick.

My bachelorette party was great! We had a photo scavenger hunt in Coronado, dinner at Miguel's, then back to the apartment for gifts and talk, and then a sleepover with my very favorite girls. Thank you, Jenna, Sonia, and Mandy for sticking it out slumber party style. Sleeping sucked, Dear John sucked, but the bonding was great.

Dragged my behind off the couch this morning to meet Chris and his family for brunch (see earlier picture (sent from my brand new Samsung Reality (which is awesome))), then it was off to the nail salon. Want to know a secret? I hate getting my nails done. It hurts me. I don't know if my feet are just super sensitive or what, but I swear my toes are bright red when they're done, from all the pain they've caused me. Today, I literally watched the woman tear off a piece of my skin. My skin! And they take that little flat tool and jam it over your nail and straight into your toe. Seriously, I'm all tensed up the entire time. I wouldn't do it at all except that Chris has put in a request for me to girly it up a bit occasionally.

Also, it always takes so long.

And that's why we were late for our rehearsal. We actually had to rehearse on a completely different lawn than our actual ceremony lawn, because there was another wedding going on there. We had to improvise some, since our lawn includes a fountain and a view of downtown San Diego, but I think it's going to work. And I just need to say I LOVE our wedding party. They are so much stinking fun! It was just such a great atmosphere of joking around and watching fish jump out of the water. (I was pretty much mesmerized by this the whole time we ran through the first time, and turns out my bridesmaids were too-- stay tuned for an awesome picture Cody caught of them watching the fish-- anyway, if I spot a fish jumping out of the water tomorrow, I'll completely lose my focus on the wedding-- sorry, babe.) Jenafer was amazing coordinating everyone, and Justin was a great minion. ;) Jessica was the perfect flower girl after take one (where she booked it the first five yards or so), and it's all just going to be so perfect!

Then it was off to the dinner at BJ's. We had the entire outside area closed off just for us, and they've recently updated the outside; it was completely awesome. They have new loungey booths now that really give it a party atmosphere. We had all you can eat pizza and appetizers, and Chris and I table hopped because we weren't sure who we should sit with. So we chose everybody! When we passed out our wedding party gifts, Chris explained the story behind the 365 book (which we'd given to everyone) and how it was by Ryan showing me the book, and me thinking this Chris must just be an awesome guy, that we were all there tonight. I just love our love story!

Then it was back home to finish packing, ogle over the presents already piled in the garage (presents!), and try to analyze why my tooth still hurts (there's no more tooth, for crying out loud!). Then Chris left with Kris and Becky to go stay the night at their time share, where the boys will be getting ready, and I continued prepping for the day and the trip at the condo, where us girls will be primping.

So... I should be going to bed... but I don't know if I'll be able to sleep. ;) See you on the other side!


Remember, the new blog is www.lovelikeapolaroid.blogspot.com. Don't know when the first post will go up, but please keep checking; I promise it will come eventually!

25 day countdown

At 25 days left (25!), here's how our evenings normally look:

He + computer ( + beer) = last minute wedding design.

She + computer ( + extra large coke) = math, math, and more math studying.


25 days!

"Napoleon goes over plans for world domination"

Alternate title: Chris pours over plans for wedding domination, 2010.

Packing it up.

Due to the late arrival of summer this year, and the atrociously hot temperature in our townhouse these days, the only time I can pack without wanting to to die is times like this. Three a.m. Three a.m. has found me on the last few nights boxing up scrapbooks, clothes, and old memories. Seriously, I have lots of old memories. Like, bins of old memories. They range from photo albums to old camp staff notebooks to boxes of pictures to stuffed happy birthday bears. I am amazed at how much of my "stuff" is in the form of memories.

(I'm also amazed at how much underwear I have- certainly more than one person needs, and this is not helped by last week's bridal shower.)


(Can I talk about underwear on here? Will you guys stop reading if I do?)


(Please don't stop reading. I'll go back to talking about normal things here.)

So I've been sifting through my memories. And boxing up my present. And the future? It's kind of up in the air right now. Besides the obvious changes, that is. I'm marrying an amazing man. I get to spend the rest of my life with him. But where we'll spend our first year? What our house will look like? When we get to settle into our own space? That's all TBD. For now, we just know we'll make do at the condo, most of our things packed away in the garage for the real move. Whenever and wherever that will be.

We are at exactly 30 days now, and it's still so hard to believe that in just 30 days, everything will change. As I sit here on my bed, looking around at my half naked room, it's hard to imagine that in 30 days I won't be roommates with Jenna, Brittany, and Jen. I won't be waiting for Jenna to finish up in the bathroom at night so I can go in and brush my teeth. I won't stay up late watching Friends episodes with Jen. And I've seen so much of Brittany these past few years, what with living and working together, but 30 days from now I'll be gone and she'll have started her new job.

It's all so weird.

Also, weird? I get to live with a boy.... weird.

My first ever bridal shower

Sunday was my birthday! And as is tradition at the Woodman classroom, we had a celebration!

But not just any ol' birthday celebration, mind you. I was surprised with a birthday/bridal shower luncheon on Monday!

My co-workers seriously rock. No wonder Woodman is the most coveted classroom.

So I headed into the kitchen around 12:15, prepared for my birthday lunch, as as I rounded the corner I saw... (da, da, da!)... a Victoria's Secret bag. And I was all, "wha?" and Brittany was all, "welcome to your birthday bridal shower!" And I was all, "the guys are leaving, right? Right?"

Nope. The guys stayed.

We had a big ol' potluck with lumpia, fried chicken, couscous, a fruit bowl, and two cakes... one of which was my favorite Hans & Harry cake.

Brittany even facilitated bridal shower games to play! She passed out clothespins to play the "you may not say the words bride, groom, wedding, dress, or Chris" game. I lost real fast on that one, using Chris' name of course. But Dave ended up winning his very first bridal shower game from it.

We also did the "how much do all these things cost?" with a bag of cleaning supplies... I was exactly $1 off that game, P.S., with a guess of $16.76. Darn that Rachel girl for taking that prize from me.

(But it's okay: I got to keep all the stuff in the bag. Chris and I will have a clean house!)

Co-workers Lora Lae and Baby Rachel (Woodman inside joke):

Our resident math wiz, Domingo, hanging loose at the shower, and sporting his clothespin:

Michelle, who is my specific teacher, and who is amazing!

Me opening up various presents and cards. I got a birthday card signed by the students and a special card delivered by two of my favorites, plus the Woodman staff card. I was a little, ahem, wary of opening my Victoria's Secret bag in front of the guys, but Michelle assured me it was fine. In it was a gift card... thank goodness. ;)

I also got something from our registry: our two glass mixing cups. Our kitchen is well on its way. And, my fellow scrapbooking co-worker Lora Lae also gave me an adorable scrapbook for wedding pictures, in our specific wedding colors! Loved it!

But by far, the best picture of the day goes to Baby Rach:

Thank you, Woodman friends! I love working with you all and couldn't ask for a better place to spend the majority of my day!

Weekends are not for fun, they are for wedding planning

As Chris has been saying recently, we've got all the big stuff taken care of. Now it's on to the little stuff that should be super fun. Except we're so burnt out on wedding planning we don't want to do it anymore!

Shopping for candy should be fun.

Picking out jewelry and a veil should be fun.

Pouring through our hard drives for reception music should be fun.

And sometimes it's fun. But most of the time it kind of feels like a chore. Homework, if you will. And nobody likes homework.

We had a good day on Sunday, actually. Did some out of the house planning, which may have been what we needed to end our funk. (And when I say 'our' funk, I usually mean me, and my funk, but since we're about to be married we share everything now. Including funks.) We headed down to the Coronado Community Center with our sketches of where things were going to go the day of, just to make sure we hadn't accidentally decided the cake table would go in front of a door or something. We stood out on the lawn and counted how many seconds it would take our party people to get from Point A (hidden behind a fountain) to Point B (the front). We counted pillars on the patio to determine how many Chinese lanterns we would need. Good times.

After that we stopped at David's Bridal to check for Jessica's flower girl dress. See, I had made a mistake in wedding planning. I had assumed a flower girl dress wouldn't need to be picked out and ordered months before even the wedding dress had been picked out and ordered. But apparently that's how the wedding world works. If I ever write a book about my misadventures in wedding planning, this will be one of the first topics: Find a flower girl dress before you even bother with your own dress.

So we were resorting to hoping the dress we liked, in the color we liked, in the size of our flower girl would magically appear in stock at our David's Bridal, since it was too late to order it with a guarantee of getting it before the wedding. It wasn't there. But a manager was. And she said she'd called the manufacturere "just to see if they happen to have any extra in stock." Guess what? They did! So we paid $15 more and it will be here the end of August, probably before the bridesmaid dresses, ordered months ago, will get here.

After that we went candy shopping for the candy bar. Okay, that was fun.

So we got a lot done this weekend. And it was nice being out and about with Chris, especially when we were able to achieve all three goals we set out for.

But I'm going to be stoked the next time we have a weekend that starts out with, "What do you want to do?" "I don't know. What do you want to do?" "Let's do nothing." "Okay."

It will be a good day. :)

Happy Fourth! I love America!

We will spend this year's Fourth of July running errands all over creation, in an attempt to gather all the "little things" we need for the wedding.

And then hopefully we'll find ourselves somewhere with a view of fireworks... not sure how it's all going to work out so far.

Wish us luck! We've got some crazy things to find today!


UPDATE


We ended up just coming back to Chris' condo after our errands (got almost everything on our list!) and hoped to see the fireworks from his balcony. Guess what? We could totally see the bay fireworks from the college area! So even though we weren't there, right underneath them like last  year, we still saw them. And then, to celebrate, we tested out the champaign we bought at Trader Joe's today. Peach flavored champagne is yum, fyi. The only champagne I've ever drank and actually been able to down pretty easily. We have a winner for toasts at the wedding!

Engagement Pictures

Finally, finally, finally, our pictures are back and I've been allowed to show off some of them. Only some, because the really great ones have to be saved for showing off on the wedding day.

Wedding Updates

With everything gone on (work, school, and wedding planning) it's hard to find time to note all the little things going on right now, which makes me sad, because this time is such a whirlwind, and I want to be able to look back and remember it all. Luckily, even if I'm not writing it all down, I've at least got my camera handy almost all the time. And while Chris generally rolls his eyes any time I dash for the camera when either of us is doing anything wedding related, he'll appreciate it too someday. So here's what's been going on with us the last few weeks.

Chris bought all the fixin's for mixed drinks, in an attempt to find the perfect signature drink for the big day. I won't reveal it here, but it's yummy! We tried four or five different drinks (over different nights, btw) before settling on our signature drink.

We got all snazzy dressed up for our engagement pictures session with Rico and Rachel Castillero. We had a GREAT time with them, at our rustic barn location in Encinitas, but these are pictures we snapped of each other before we headed out.

Chris borrowed some lenses from work for us to use on our Jen/Justin/Zoey photoshoot. This is the first day we had the fish eye lens to pla

More playing with the new lenses: I think this time was with the 24mm, the lens I used for almost all my shots of Jen/Justin/Zoey.

Chris has been spray painting it up lately. His garage looks like a yellow and gray painted wedding shop. This is our pretty bird cage for cards!

We've been househunting too, obviously. On our way out to a place in Dehesa, Chris pulled off the side of the road to check out these for sale signs... for a neighborhood of gigantic houses, no less. (And of course I was ready with my camera!)

This was a good night. For our one year anniversary, we decided to wait until our 100 day countdown to go out and celebrate. We chose to go back to Forever Fondue, where we'd gone for our sixth month anniversary. We really loved it the first time around, that quiet atmosphere, the drawn out dinner, the fun of the whole experience. So we went back again to relax, discuss some more wedding ideas, and celebrate one and one hundred. And drink beer (him) and Tokyo Teas (me).

We've hit up the dollar store a few times for wedding deco: frames, thank you cards, table decorations, and, this time, bubbles. Chris had to make sure the bubbles worked before he was willing to plunk down $20 for them, though.

Disclaimer: This is not our child. (That would sure make for an interesting story though, wouldn't it?) This is me, Chris, and Chris' little cousin Bella at the family reunion. That girl is crazy. She goes around telling people that, I think because she's heard so many people say it about her.

Hot. Not much else to say.

Cute picture of us at the beach, during Jenna's "We're-finally-burning-that-awful-not-a-couch-bonfire." Au revoir, not-a-couch.

Here's a fun story: I went to the post office to get stamps for our Save the Dates (no abbreviations!). The lady asked me if I wanted any special stamps. I said, sure, if you have any cute flowers or something, if it's not too much trouble. Twenty minutes later, after searching through everyone else's work spaces and the back room for the perfect ring stamps, despite my insistence that it really wasn't that big of a deal, and after the manager said, "No trouble! I'll just open the vault for some more rings!" I finally walked away with these.

They are cute.

Sarah's new kitten! We baby-sat Nala for a couple hours while she drove down to pick her up. Just talked to Sarah tonight; apparently they're getting along well, though Sarah fears that Nala's easygoing attitude is keeping Sarah's negative reinforcement (aka a spray bottle squirt in the face for jumping on the table) from taking full effect.

And that's what's up! Hopefully this next week, since I'm off both work and school for a bit, I'll be able to keep up with what's going on around here. :)

I think the worst part so far of being engaged is making my closest friends pony up tons of money for a dress. It's seriously the worst feeling.  

Boo.

Sorry, guys. 

Disclaimer: This is not the right color. 

(Our color is quarry.)

At least Jenna rocks it.

The artichoke dip at our wedding will be fabulous.

If you learn nothing else from this simple blog, remember this at least.

We went today to try out the food that will be served at our wedding. The main chef offered a tasting for us at his condo, and we weren't sure what this meant? Were we getting a meal? Were we getting bite-sized pieces of the main dish? Why were we paying $50 for this?

But holy vegetables-that-I-don't-even-like, Batman; that artichoke dip was worth the $50.

We basically got an awesome sit-down lunch at the guys' place, where he served us all the main foods that would be at the wedding. We started out with a couple of the appetizers, mainly the dip and some sausage he had prepared. Then we tried the two different types of chicken he had, though he promised we would pick the second one (we did) and then we try the pasta too. At one point he asked me why I looked so dazed (this guy kept it real, P.S.), and I told him I was trying to figure out how he made this chicken so perfect.

And he told me his secret. Seriously, he did.

But I can't tell you. If I told you, I'd have to kill you.

Okay, I'll tell you part of it. The part about where he gets his chicken. (Drum roll, please.) He gets it at Costco. Apparently the stuff they sell us at the stores is the lowest of the low, and all the restaurants buy from specific wholesale places that serve the real, non Food Inc. chickens, so no matter how awesomely you cook, it will never be as good as something you will find at a restaurant. But apparently Costco does a good job of getting some of this good chicken. And also beef and fish.

So here's what we've learned: Costco chicken good. Vons chicken bad. And artichoke dip is in our future.

The Repentance Story of a Future Wife of a Designer

Get ready, people- this one's gonna be sappy!

In response to my frequent blog rants about the difficulties of being engaged to a designer who likes to design and wishes to design many things and constantly talks about the design of our wedding (and our invitations... and our centerpieces... and our bridesmaid dresses... and my shoes...), my designer fiance has written a rebuttal on his own blog.

If you haven't read it yet, you should. Among other things, he refers to me as a child with ADD. And calls me crazy. And something about the Easter bunny, which is really just ridiculous.

And while, yes, I maintain the fact that it is hard marrying a designer, I have also found the following to be true:

1) I love that Chris is a designer.
2) I love that he is creative and passionate and tries to incorporate both of those traits in everything he does.
3) This includes our wedding.
4) These are traits that I have always admired in him.
5) They are, in fact, the traits that first led me to him.
6) Would I ever want to change that about him?
7) No.

So in these last couple of weeks, as I have lamented the fact that Chris has opinions and wants to make our wedding awesome, I've also realized that I love him so much for it. Even when he's driving me slightly crazy with "the big picture, all the time" and I just want to look at "the little picture, for now, please."

Like he said, love is hard work. Sometimes you have to compromise. Sometimes you have to concede that the bridesmaid dress he picked out is pretty awesome. Sometimes you have to concede that you only bought those yellow shoes to get something accomplished that day. Sometimes you have to take a match and burn that damn Pantone wheel. 


Here's the sap part:

I realized all this last Friday, as I was driving home from work. I was on the 125 in rush hour, and I was doing that thinking and praying simultaneously thing that you sometimes do when you're feeling overwhelmed. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Well, I was feeling overwhelmed with schoolwork, with real work, with the wedding... especially with the wedding, and with Chris, for wanting to put so much work into the planning and the details and the research and the... let's just say it was overwhelming.

And then suddenly I wasn't overwhelmed with all that stuff anymore. It was back burner stuff. Instead, I was hit with the overwhelming blessing Chris is in my life. How he makes me smile, and laughs at the same things I laugh at, and is content to sit for hours with me on our laptops, and appreciates beauty, and appreciates me, and works so hard, and feeds me, and takes care of me, and a million other things that just take my breath away when I pause to think about them.

He is amazing.

And to think that God's given him to me, to stand beside me, and love me, and be my family, it's just so incomprehensible that such a blessing as he is could be given to me.

And I'll admit it. I was crying a little as I drove down that 125 in rush hour. And when he called me two seconds later with a wedding question, I blurted out, "I was just thinking about how much I love you!" And then everything was great.

So marrying a designer is hard work. And marrying a non-designer is hard work.

But I think we're going to make it just fine.

Telling our peeps

The invitations have gone out.

The calls have been made.

And ten lucky contestants have been chosen to play Wedding Party Idol.

Just kidding. There's no contest. We want everyone to just be best friends. 

(And we'd prefer if most of them didn't sing.)

(If your name is Sarah Trementozzi, you can sing.)

Yes, I sent invitations to my bridesmaids. And, yes, they all knew I'd picked them before they got their invitations. I'm all not-good-at-keeping-secrets awesome that way. 

I made the invites with scalloped note cards, envelopes, and ribbon from Joann's Crafts, along with Chris' nifty printer that only ruined three pages by rotating the little card halfway through the printer duct. (Is that the appropriate terminology for the part of the printer where you know something is going terribly wrong and yet your fingers can't reach in to fix it or at least salvage the quickly diminishing numbers of scalloped cards?)

Chris contemplated invitations for his guys, but in the end he settled on the quick and dirty method:

"Hey, Chris*. Want to be in my wedding? Awesome. Hey when do we want to go golfing** next?"

And since I just named off all the guys, here's the list of girls, for those of you who have tiny screens and can't read the girls' names on the picture above (or for those of you who don't know you can click on pictures to enlarge them....): my sister Britt, Chris' sister Sarah, and my amazing roommates Jenna, Sonia, and Mandy.

*Substitute Chris for Kris, Cody, or Ryan.

** Substitute golfing for watching 24 or going to a concert.

Cupcake Tasting

Chris and I got a bunch of stuff done this weekend. We met with Jarrod, who's going to be DJ'ing for us. We took a trip downtown to check out hotels for... you know. Later. We decided on the bridesmaid's dresses. And we went to our first cake sampling.


(Cup)cake that is. We went thinking we'd just buy some to sample. Which we did. Then when we asked about their wedding deals, they gave us four more to sample. 


We are now up to our ears in cupcakes.


But they're really yummy.

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. :)