New look blog...

As you may (or may not) have noticed, I've removed the background that was causing an issue when viewing the blog on a mobile, hopefully this will fix the problem. Also, we've got a new banner that I think really ties the room together. What do you think? More updates to the blog and website are coming in the next two weeks...

April To Do List

Things have been kinda slow in the wedding planning department...currently we're pretty consumed with buying our house (ugh....MORE mortgage paper work came in the mail today) and all the stuff that goes along with moving. Still ,we've manage to check some pretty big things off our list in March. Here's how we did:

Launch Website/Blog: Yep! As you can see, we did.

Finalize Guest List: Done! We're happy with our decision to keep it small, but also a little sad that we couldn't invite every single friend.

Send Save-the-Dates: Done!

Book Officiant: In progress. I sent an email to our top choice, right before all of the house madness started. I need to set up a phone call ASAP.

Book DJ: In progress. Erik's been working on this. I think we've settled on the DJ, we just need to lock it down now.

Go Dress Shopping: Yes! Not only did I go shopping, I also bought a dress! Glad to have that one off the list.

Start Registry: Yep! We've started one...hope to have it finished and posted by the end of April.

And here's what we're hoping to accomplish in April:

Book Officiant (for realz this time)

Book DJ (for realz this time)

Finish Registry

Rehearsal Plans

Book Hair/Makeup

Start Contacting Florists

It's gonna be a busy month with the semester wrapping up and getting ready for the big move. But hopefully we'll still make some progress.

For funsies, here are some more pictures from March. Enjoy!

March 10...late night, working on the website. Another picture of Brodie getting in the way.

March 13...another late night session...this time, addressing save the dates.

March 18...warming up for Running of the Brides!

Running of the Brides

Well…we survived! Here's a recap of our day. We hit the road around 3:30 am and got in line at 6:30. The line was pretty long at that point, so I was a little nervous (and as it turns out, rightfully so).

6:30 am...the line.

While we waited, I prepped Erik on the different kinds of wedding dresses, and what we were looking for. A few minutes before 8 am the excitement was building and we were ready to start running!

Just before 8:00 a.m....proudly displaying our signage.

There was a countdown, and the crowd took off. It probably took us less than 30 seconds to reach the doors…but we were too late. They announced as we approached the doors that all 2,000 of the dresses were off the racks! See, here's the basic strategy for Running of the Brides: You bring a team of people, run to the racks, and blindly grab as many dresses as possible. Then you take your pile of dresses and start making a "trade pile" and a "try on pile." While you're trying on, your team is out trying to trade the ones you rejected (usually because it's the wrong size) and bring back more dresses for you.

We got inside, and just had no clue what to do since all of the dresses were taken. We probably spent about 10 minutes walking around, hoping someone would see our sign and our sad faces and give up a dress (they didn't). Finally, I turned to Erik, and told him we needed a game plan. We decided to split up and start begging for dresses.

I didn't have any luck, but Erik triumphantly returned with a dress! It was an ugly size 10, but it was something! When started trying to trade, we realized that it was an issue that I was looking for a size 10 and I was in possession of a size 10…basically we really needed a different size. For example, I could give someone a size 6 and they could give me the 10 I was looking for. At some point we traded for a size 4 and that's when things started going well for us! Size 4s were fairly rare (most dress samples are 10-12), so once we got our hands on one, we were able to start accumulating dresses.

Probably, for about the first hour and half we were trading…but not really getting anything good enough to try on. By 10:00 dresses were finally starting to return to the racks, and that's when I started to find some good stuff. Basically, it was useless to get there so early. We really should have just showed up at 10:00. If we really wanted to be successful when the store opened, we needed to camp out overnight, and bring a big team.

10:00 am...Finally trying on dresses! This was one of my favorites. Even though you probably can't tell, it was dirty and stained...and I wasn't confident that the stains would come out.

Around 10:00 though, we started feeling optimistic. I tried on a few dresses and I felt like we had some good options. The problem was finding a dress that I liked that was actually in decent condition. Most of the dresses were samples, so I was expecting to be a little beat up. Well some of them were in really bad shape--stained, ripped, and just plain dirty. So we spent the rest of the morning alternating between trying on, hitting the racks, and trading.

At 1:30, I was out of energy. I sent Erik out for food, while I protected my stockpile of dresses. After being there for so long, I actually had about 8 really nice dresses…so I had a lot of women (mostly mothers of the bride) trying to swoop in on them. Erik returned. We ate…and tried to keep our spirits up.

I'll summarize the afternoon by saying it sucked! We were both exhausted. And it was just overwhelming. I had a lot of nice dresses. Every one was weighing in at this point. I would try on one dress and some random woman would say that was her favorite. Then I'd try on another one, and someone else would tell me I would be crazy not to buy it. I was expecting to find ONE nice dress at Filene's. Well I found about six. And that's why the whole thing took forever. It was a really tough choice.

Finally, we started eliminating. And I started paying more attention to what I wanted, instead of what the other women were saying….and in the end…I bought a fantastic dress!

After doing some research on the interwebs, I think I saved closer to $2301. Score!

Erik went above and beyond expectations. He was more patient than I was. He didn't freak out once. He didn't say let's just leave. He didn't roll his eyes. He didn't complain. In short, he did much better than me! Over dinner that night, I asked him how he did it. How did he remain so calm the entire day? "Well" he said, "there were a lot of boobs." LOL.

You can see more pictures of this crazy event here, including a picture of a triumphant Erik.

Massive To Do List

Alternative title: Getting our Sh*t Together. I mentioned earlier that apart from booking the venue and photographer, I've largely been a "deadbeat bride. " A few things have contributed to my deadbeat attitude.

1) I'm frikin' busy! I teach a 4:4 load, I'm trying to be successful at what I do, we're house hunting, and I'm making more of an effort (compared to when I was in grad school) to have an actual life. Fitting wedding planning into all of that has been difficult.

2) I'm trying to adopt a pretty laid back attitude about the whole wedding and focus more on the meaning of our marriage. I don't want to obsess over centerpieces, dresses, etc. Sure I want everything to be awesome, and fun, and I want a pretty dress and pretty centerpieces. But…have you been on the internet lately?...there are like a bajillion wedding sites out there with a bajillion ideas. It's easy to obsess over all of the options if you let yourself.

But…as laidback as I may want to be…and as busy as I am…a wedding still requires planning. Sigh.

My (silly) hope was that we could book some vendors and then wait until the summer (when I'm not teaching) to work out all of the details. But then I started realizing how much one decision is dependent on the other. For example, I wanted to start contacting florists for quotes. But then I realized I have no idea what kind of flowers I want. What colors? What style? Do I even want flowers? Then I turned to the internet for answers…probably lost 4 hours of my day…still had no idea what kind of flowers I wanted…and decided to just stop thinking about it.

That was probably not the best approach. Usually, when I'm overwhelmed by a big project, I make a to-do-list, and that helps to reduce my stress. So finally…I made one for the wedding.

This is the biggest to-do-list in the history of me.

First I organized everything by month, and filled in all of the major stuff that I knew had to get done by a certain time. Then I was able to work backwards to figure out when I needed to start on a certain task (i.e., invitations should go out in July…so designing should start in June…ideas should be bounced around in May). It took me a whole night to write it all out. But it was well worth it. I feel like I have a much better plan to tackle this wedding.

This list is really a master plan for the whole process. It's not very pretty. So the next night, I made a pretty one for the month of March…broken down by week. Not really necessary, but fun. I'm trying to figure out a good place to hang it so we see it everyday.

Finally, I made the list for this month. I find it helpful to write out all of the steps in accomplishing a task. If I just write down "launch website" … it's too vauge, and probably won't get done. So every little step in accomplishing all of our monthly tasks has been put on this page.

I know it may seem like list making overkill…if you're counting, I have 3 lists. But as long as it's keeping us on track (which it is at the moment), I plan to keep it up.

Are you a list maker? What works for you? Any tips for me?

We interrupt wedding planning...

...for house hunting! Jeeze. It's crazy over here at Hoover-Brandt headquarters! We started seriously house hunting last week, and planned to take our time looking for a house. Well, we went out on Friday and looked at a bajillion houses, fell in love with one, put in an offer on Saturday, received a counter offer today, and we're getting ready to fire back! So wedding planning is on hold for the next few days. Unfortunately, Running of the Brides in Atlanta is on Friday...I don't think they will reschedule it for us. We'll see if we're still standing at the end of this week! Anyway, wish us luck on negotiations!

A small (blurry) sneak peak at what is hopefully to come!