Wedding Dreams

WHERE HAS TIME GONE!!?!

I can't believe we have less than 2 weeks until the wedding. Life has been super busy. A day in my life recently has gone something like this: Wake up, school, home, wedding stuff, dinner, wedding stuff (or swimming if its tuesday or thursday) then bed. On weekends, wedding errands happen before any fun. I have so much to blog about and not enough time to do it! As a pretty laid back bride, something has happened to me that I never thought would happen. I have been having wedding "bad" dreams. I wanted to share some of them. So here they are:

1. This was the very first wedding dream I ever had. I woke up panicked and then couldn't help but laugh. 

The dream takes place at my parents house. I was SCREAMing at Jman because he opened all of our wedding presents without me. I wasn't upset that I didn't get to open any presents though. The reason I was upset was because he did not write down who we received gifts from who. I distinctly remember saying "how are we going to write thank you notes!!!!!" 

2. Jman and I are at the site where we are going to have the ceremony. He walked down the aisle and then I did. When we got to the alter, we were completely unorganized. We had nothing prepared and did not know what to say. We just stood there and said nothing. Then out of the "audience" people who i did not know started rioting. 

3. It is the day of the wedding. Everything is going smoothly and at the end of the reception we are getting ready to do last dance and farewell. Right before we start to leave I notice the photographer is no where to be found. So we started looking for him everywhere. Finally we found him out in the back of the building smoking. When I asked him "where have you been!!??!" he said "I ran out of film so decided to go for a smoke". 

4. Similar to Dream #2 except we are at a church to get married. At the alter there is a priest. Jman says his vows and the priest tells him that God has given him permission to marry because he is a holy man. Then it is my turn. I say my vows and the priest tells me I am a sinner and God will not allow me to marry such a holy man as J. So instead of getting married.. the ceremony ended and everyone when home.  (this was the worst of all the dreams. I actually woke up very upset). 

Now for the most part, I would not call these bad dreams nightmares. They are funny to me because I know none of them could possibly happen in real life. Jman would not open the presents without me, we have the ceremony organized (for the most part), the photographer doesn't smoke and is all digital/ doesn't use film and we are not getting married in a church or by a priest. On the other hand, I do think all of these dreams are happening because I feel very stressed and anxious about the upcoming weeks. There are a lot of things on my mind and a lot of things that need to be done. I am sure every bride has gone through this and I keep reminding myself that I am not in this alone! 

In other news, My shower was a few weekends ago and my Bachelorette party was last weekend. Both parties were a hit and I will try to blog about the details in the next week or so!! 

Until next time, 

The adventures of doing my own invitations...

Like many other brides and grooms to be, once Jman and I were engaged, we did a budget. Also like many couples who are engaged, we had the discussion "What's more important... spending money on the wedding or spending money on the house.." It was very important to Jman (and I) to stay on budget because anything over budget was cutting into our house fund and in our opinion, a nice house is more important than an extravagant wedding. So we went the DIY route for many of the wedding projects.

As Jman and I shopped around for wedding invitations, we went to a few places that did invitations like hallmark and we also looked online. These places cost out the A** for cute invitations. So we were faced with the decision, DIY or go over budget. Once that decision was made, we also had to make the decision computer or gocco. Now before I tell you what we decided.. let me rewind about 8 months.

My very crafty sister (and maid of honor) also decided to do her invitations. She had done a lot of research and brought a "Gocoo" Machine. This is how it works: "The system works using flash bulbs, a carbon-based image or photocopy and an emulsion-coated screen. When the bulbs are manually flashed, the carbon in the drawing or photocopy burns the screen into a stencil. Several colors of Ink can then be applied at one time and multiples can be stamped out, as many as 100 before re-inking is needed." (See savegocco.com for more information). So we stamped out all of my sister's invites. (and in true little sister fashion.. i swore up and down that I would never do this for my invitations because it was way to much work).

So anyway..long story short... the Gocoo Machine was the way to go. Here is the rest of the story in pictures...

Day 1: Stamping Envelopes.. Estimated time.. 4 hours

Day 2: Invitations and response cards.. Estimated time..8 hours

Crafty sister helped stamp ALL day

 Day 3: Calligraphy and Stuffing and Stamping...

Kitty tried to help...but proved useless..

A few beers helped keep us on task.. 

My very talented future husband took on the job of the calligrapher.. He did an AWESOME job... (much better than I could ever do). 

All finished and ready to go out the next morning!!

You can't tell from this picture.. but this is the driveway covered with ice... not letting us get out to take the invites to the post office!! (OH NO!!)

Luckily, my crafty sister/maid of honor was here to save the day!! We walked the invites to the bottom of the drive way where she picked them up and took them to the post office for us!! YAY

I learned a few things from this experience.. 

    1. What you save in money you will spend in time.. Overall, I would say we spent 16 hours doing these invitations (just to save $200). 

    2. If you are not a crafty person (like I am not) you have to over compensate with patience (also an area I lack). 

    3. You can't do everything by yourself. Thank God I have great people in my life to help me and support me..especially my lovely fiancé, crafty sister and patient mother. 

Would I "DIY" my wedding invites if I could go back in time? Yes I would still have made the same decision. Why? Because my invites are original, different and I LOVE THEM!! 

Would I recommend others to DIY? Only if you have a crafty sister.. 

Wedding Details Update!

We had a busy summer! 


Here are some fun wedding details Jman and I decided on: 


One: Book Honeymoon and Flight: (I have to admit we splurged a little with the honeymoon..a few dollars over budget!)

Hello Jamaica!! 

This is our honeymoon suite...

Which looks over a semi-private pool..

Two: Send Save the Dates


Three: Find a DJ (We went with C&J entertainment.. They will be doing our ceremony music along with the reception music)


Four: Find Cake- Freaking delicious cupcakes from The Main Ingredient in Annapolis! We still need to find a cute way to present the cupcakes. This will be a fall project. 


Five: Find Officiant- My Friend K's Mom has been so generous as to volunteer for this job.    She is perfect for the type of ceremony we want! (Informal but classy..aka...short and sweet) 


Six: Register! (Which btw... is so freaking fun!!) Jman and I had a great time wandering around Khols and Bed Bath and Beyond with the scanner gun. 


Step 7: Block off a hotel to host our out of town guests- Comfort Inn (Nice and really close to the reception)


Step 8: Find a Dress!! I fell in love with this dress..Which was $5,500 over budget..

So this is my inspiration for the dress that I found and LOVE even more!
(and it was in my budget!)

Things still left to do:
1. Find a Veil- I like this one: 

Bird Cage! (Looks freaking amazing with my dress.!!)

2. Make a decision on center pieces and put it to action. Here is the inspiration for our wine themed wedding: 

3. Make a decision on flowers. We kinda ran out of money and decided a great DJ was more important to really expensive flowers so we may be going the DO-It-Yourself route... how hard could arranging flowers be anyway?! 

4. Pick out our wedding rings

5. Find a good transportation company so our guests can get as drunk as they want and have a ride back to the hotel...

6. Go dress and tux shopping for wedding party

7. Do invitations

8. Order Favors...

blah blah blah the list goes on and on and on.... 

Still having fun picking out things for our big day! There still has been NO Drama!! (Which is the thing that is most important to Jman and I)

-Until Next Time www

OBX!

Last week was my Sister's wedding! It can't believe how fast it came and went. It seems like yesterday that they decided on having the weekend in the Outer banks. Despite the 5 years I lived in North Carolina, I have never been to this part of the Outer banks. It was absolutely beautiful! We could not have asked for better weather.


Jman and I drove down there after work on Wednesday. We got in really late and were very tired but some how managed to stay up and party for a few hours. We swam in the pool and went ghost crab hunting on the beach. It was quality time with my Jman, R and K. Thursday was the rehersal dinner so the beginning part of the day was spent doing errands. The rehearsal was short and sweet followed by a fantastic dinner hosted by K's parents. Then we had a party on the beach where all of our family and friends came out, drank and celebrated.


The wedding went off without a hitch. The bridesmaids were able to relax for most of the day and it was unusually calm for what you would expect of a bride on the big day. The wedding was on the beach and then we all limo bussed it over to the reception hall. Great food. Great people. Great Drinks. Great time.


I haven't loaded my pictures on my computer...they are coming soon along with..........


Engagement photos!!! After 6 months of being engaged we FINALLY were able to get to Raleigh for some pictures. I have been checking the photographer's website 100times a day... still not up.. hopefully they will come soon.


Tri-Training got put on hold while i was in NC.. Will start back up and update soon. ;)

-Until Next Time www

p.s.- SCHOOLS OUT!! I made it through my second year of teaching! Woot Woot!

Is a stress free wedding possible?

Woah! Life got busy! Here's a quick update..


So Jman and I are ENGAGED!! I have dreamed about that day since I was 5 years old and it finally happened. I have always wondered if I would be disappointed if it didn't happen the way I wanted it to be. I was definitely not expecting it but IT was 20x better than I could have ever imagined. Jman took me out to eat at our FAVORITE restaurant (the melting pot). We sat in a small, very private, and cozy booth. We drank a bottle of 7 Deadly Zins red wine (I highly recommend) and ate the Mojo fondue. Right after we started eating desert, Jman popped the question! I will never forget how happy I was at that moment. It was truly amazing!


All I want to do now is wedding plan! Everyone always says that wedding planning is stressful. I haven't felt that at all. The biggest thing for us is to stay on budget! This will be very challanging. After talking with my lovely Jman, we decided that owning a house was much more important to us than having a very expensive wedding. So far it has been difficult finding vendors and venues in our budget. So it looks like I will be doing most of it myself! We finally picked a date and a venue last week! If it wasn't 15 months away then I would have my photography, cake, flowers and dress picked out too! I am trying to pace myself so that I have something to do this summer.


In other news, we started a new semester at school! I was glad to get a new batch of kids. The students were starting to get lazy and apathetic. I am excited to re-do forensics now that I know a little bit more and already have lots of labs and activities planned out.

-Until Next Time www