Picture recaps

We tried on our rings the other day. I love that Chris is so excited to finally wear his.

Becky did an AMAZING job crafting our rehearsal dinner invitations!

Chris did a remodel of the bulletin board, this time will all our loose wedding paraphernalia.

Wedding party gifts, wrapped and ready to be given!

Picked up my dress from David's Bridal on Friday night. It's amazing. I forgot how much I was in love with that dress until I tried it on again after alterations. The things so big though, the only place to keep it is hanging all awkwardly in Chris' closet. Don't worry- he's not going to peek. I tempt him on a regular basis and he flat out refused to look at it before the 20th. :)

Working out some kinks for our photobooth. This was taken around 9pm against the garage door. With a gigantic outdoor spot light.

Time for some recaps!

Coming up:

The dreaded CSET.
Trip to the dentist.
Finishing up the wedding planning.
Relaxing?

Thirteen days away and...

... a bridesmaid dress has gone MIA

... the CSET looms ever closer

... my top right wisdom tooth decided RIGHT NOW is the time to make a fuss about still being up there



Here's hoping to a better 'twelve days away.'

Bachelor(ette) Day

Today is Chris' bachelor party day. Which means I am a bachelorette for the day.

Basically this means I can eat whatever I want, watch whatever I want, and do whatever I want. Sometimes it's so pesky having someone else to plan activities around. Am I right? Married people? ;)

I ate lunch when I felt like it.

I watched NCIS, Season 7, Disc 1 when I felt like it.

I did wedding planning stuff when I felt like it.

My theme for today was "relax, but still accomplish some stuff." I slept in. Lounged for a bit. Got ready. Went to the store to get some snacks (i.e. Pepsi Max and german chocolate cake because I can), hung out with Jenna for a bit, hung out with Aaron for a bit (since he is just two doors down now), ate lunch, read some blogs, worked on our candy buffet decorations, studied some math, watched some NCIS, tried to convince my mom to get her hair done for the wedding, (tried not to argue with my mom about getting her hair done for the wedding), made labels for our candy buffet, took a long hot shower, and began studying transformational geometry. (Somewhere in there I ate the german chocolate cake.) And now I'm taking a blogging break.

Mmmmm. It's nice being a bachelorette for a day.

Maybe I miss him a little.


Moving on!

I'm really excited with how the labels for our candy bar turned out. I was a little over the decorations earlier today when I wrapped the jars in yellow ribbon. (It's really hard to wrap round objects with linear objects.) I almost decided screw this! I don't have to do it if I don't want to. It was my idea anyway! And then I pictured Chris coming home and asking me why the only wedding planning I did all day was wrap ribbons around jars and eat german chocolate cake while watching NCIS. So I got my behind in gear, grabbed my handy dandy crafting supplies and got to work.

They came out waaaaaaaaaay better than I'd expected. I printed out the word labels on white circles surrounded by yellow squares, then cut them out with my 2" round punch, keeping just enough yellow to give the circles a border. Surprisingly, I only had to do two test prints to get the right size. From there I used my Slice (which is working again, thank you very much, Making Memories) to cut out 2.5" flowers from the yellow geometric paper I designed (isn't it cute? Maybe someday I'll be a famous scrapbook designer).

And... now it's back to our regularly scheduled programming of CSET studying.

Week Recap

What we've been up to:

(Don't worry: he's a lot more chipper about wedding plans than this photo reveals.)

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And that's all I'm telling you.

:)

Tuesday was an emotional roller coaster.

It really was. First my car broke down again. Chris had to come rescue me at the school's Old Town office. I started crying when he came to get me. I hate that my car just randomly dies on me. It makes me nervous to drive, and that's a sucky thing to be nervous about. I hate that Chris had to take time out of his work day to come get me, even though I know he didn't mind.

(I also hate the bill for fixing my car, which my wonderful pre-husband took care of without batting an eye. I love my pre-husband.)

Then there was family stuff that Chris and I talked about on the ride over to Goodyear. And I cried again.

Then we got the bill, and I told myself I would not cry.

Then on the way home, Chris said, "This'll cheer you up." And he pulled out our brand new, just printed, beautiful, wonderful guest book from the backseat of his car.

It was really beautiful and wonderful. Chris designed it, and while I at first gave him a hard time for all the extra work he was putting into it, I'm so glad he went with the inspiration. It looks amazing, and I know everyone's going to love answering the prompts we picked for the pages.

Then we got back to Chris' and made dinner together and talked about more family stuff and I was getting all emotional again, until Chris came downstairs and instructed me to close my eyes, that he had a surprise. I did. When I opened them, he was holding his phone in front of my face, with this picture on it.

And seriously, how can you be sad when you see this cutie in her flower girl dress? This is the first time we're even seeing it in real life, and it looks awesome, if we do say so ourselves.

After that was a great chat with Sarah. Let me tell you something: Sarah and Chris video chatting is the best thing ever. I generally try to catch it on my own webcam, sneakily facing my laptop screen toward Chris and his computer because he just gets so darn funny and animated when he's talking with Sarah.


In fact... I just went back through some of my funnier videos of "Chris Chats with Sarah," and I decided maybe I'd whip up this little piece for the general amusement of our viewers at home.

Mmmmm... that makes me feel better.

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We are packing up to wazoo over here. And over there. At both of our places. In the hopes we will have a place to move into by the end of this month.

We're still not sure if the whole house is going to work out for us, but we know God's going to work out something for us eventually. And if we have to live at Chris' condo with roommates for awhile, so be it! At least we'll already be packed when it's time to go to our own home!

Mail Call

Okay, so now that we're less than 50 days out, this whole wedding thing has started getting pretty exciting. For instance, we now have really fun mail on a regular basis. Yes, they are in the form of RSVPs, but you look at our awesome logo and tell me you wouldn't love seeing five or six of those postcards in your box everyday.

We (read: I) make a game out of it too. Either Chris grabs the mail on his way in or he hands me the key when he gets home and I throw some sandals on to go get it myself. Then we keep them upside down until Chris pulls up our guest ledger, and begin flipping them over one by one to see who's coming. So far, I feel I'm kicking Chris' butt in RSVPs from my side, but he points out that there are still a LOT more blank spaces on his to fill.

We've filled up about half our expected spots- now comes the point where we find out if we sent out way to many invites than we can comfortably seat!

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Spent an evening in the garage together. Chris showed me how he perfectly cuts and mounts pictures onto foam board for the most professional look possible. Our poster board pictures look awesome, stored in the garage with the rest of our yellow and gray stuff.

While Chris went on to another project, I took out all my collected apothecary jars, some old boxes, and tissue wrap from Michaels to structure my beloved candy buffet. Isn't it going to be fabulous? :)

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. :)

Invitation Party! {Updated}

So yesterday we planned to have a date night-in while we addressed envelopes for our invitations. Here's what was on the schedule:

1) I was going to make dinner out of the random things in Chris' fridge (thrown together meal = beef, tater tots, and steamed edamame, in case you were wondering... actually wasn't bad).

2) We were going to run down the street to Yogurtland and stop at Vons for mixers (only got the hard stuff right now, if you know what I mean, wink, wink)

3) We were going to pop in our latest Netflixed DVD, Duplicity, and park it in front of the TV with yummy mixed drinks, envelopes, and gray Sharpies for the rest of the night.

4) We were going to finish ALL of our envelopes before the night was over, dagnabit!


So what did we actually end up doing? Everything on the list... except of course for the invitations... which were the most important part... and the whole point of our night in...

We didn't even start 'em.

So tonight! We've enlisted the help of Best Man #2 to get 'er done! So it's a different sort of date night- kind of out this time, but really in, since we'll be at Ry's. There's a possibility of mixed drinks (cause it's Ryan house), and maybe dinner. Probably no fro yo this time. Hopefully Ryan can keep us motivated to see this task through!



UPDATE!

The invitation party went splendidly! We're all done, with the exception of just a few addresses we still need. Ryan was a huge help; he stamped every envelope and RSVP and stuffed while Chris and I wrote out addresses. What a best man!!!

C + J Wedding Sneak Peak

With all the inspiration boards I've found online that have helped us plan our wedding, I though I'd make one up especially with things we're actually using for our wedding.

So without further adieu, our wedding sneak peek. It's not much yet, but it's all coming together slowly!

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Waiting...

Chris and I went and looked at a place this evening.

It's awesome. I really like it.

It's even got those really nice, smooth, clean looking maple cabinets in the kitchen and all throughout the house.

I really like those really nice, smooth, clean looking maple cabinets.

I'm smitten.

Afterward, we drove around the neighborhood to see what was nearby. Found a Mexican food place. Figured we should make sure the place has good nearby rolled tacos.

It does.

We're putting in an offer tomorrow... please pray, or cross your fingers, or whatever you need to do for us!

Happy Wednesday!

Hello, blogger people who've managed to find their way back to the ol' blog, despite my serious lack of updating skillz lately! I just had the sudden urge to update. Anything. Just to update this thing. How's everyone doing? I'm feeling fabulous, mostly because I just made a wonderfully warm and cozy dinner of tuna melts and Campbells' Vegetable Beef soup (which really doesn't require making, I suppose, more than just heating), and the OSF has supplied me with a delicious margarita to complement.

Anyway, tonight is a very special night. Tonight... we address our Save the Dates.

(PS: Don't abbreviate Save the Dates. It comes out so wrong. Chris abbreviated it when emailing our wonderful production manager (aka save the date and invitation designer) Cody, and Cody emailed back, "You're giving me what?!?!")

(PPS: Yes, I just used parenthesis inside parenthesis. When you're an English major, you're allowed to manipulate the rules of grammar.)

So we're chilling here, eating dinner, sipping our margaritas (or White Russians, if you're the OSFs, and watching the previews before The Blind Side starts. Which I hear is a fabulous movie. We saw it on a preview for our last week Netflix rental and bumped it to the top of our list immediately. Along with The Time Traveler's Wife and the Book of Eli. Well, I don't care so much about the latter but Chris does, and the preview was there, so I guess that's what we'll be watching next weekend, probably as we go through the mass amounts of wedding stuff we realize we have yet to do.

So that's my quick update for Wednesday. And now I must go, because the bartender bonus effect is setting in, and if you're not Ryan you won't know what that means, but if you are Ryan you'll be sitting at your laptop smirking right about now.

(PPS: Hi, Ryan.)