Bubbly & Sweets

I have so many things I could post about. This close to the wedding, there are so many things going on, so many projects I'm working on... This weekend, you may find that there are multiple posts a day.

Unfortunately, I'm not ready to share pics of the programs. I ran into a little bump in the road with them... I took them to the copy center at work to get the pages cut, and the lady cut them wrong. Just the one page, but it annoys the crap out of me. I don't have extra paper or the time to redo them, so I'm going to have to live with it... but before I put them together, there's something I might want to pick up at Michael's. We'll see. Either way, I'll have something ready sometime tomorrow and I'll be sure to share.

I thought I'd be able to show you pics of some of my place cards tonight. Only problem is that I started them... and after doing 10 of them, I'm thinking of nixing the whole design idea and going with something else. Gotta love changing your mind this late, huh? First with the programs, now with the place cards. But the thing is... I'm changing my mind so that things are easier on me. It's just that this late in the game, there are things that I'm not sure are worth the time and effort.

Anyway, what I can share... our toasting flutes and cake serving set. It was difficult to take photos of them. I'm sure our photographers will do a much better job at the reception, thank god!

We did end up having everything engraved at Things Remembered. As much as I hate that place, I honestly did not have any choice. I looked into every other available option I could find, and they either couldn't do it, or it was even more expensive than Things Remembered. Sickening what these people charge for something that really doesn't take long to do at all. Ugh. But I decided to bite the bullet and just get them done last Saturday... I couldn't bear to spend any more time thinking about it. You get to a certain point and you just want to get shit done.

Here they are:

The toasting flutes were given to us as a gift at our engagement party last August. They are the Lenox Jubilee Pearl flutes. They were purchased at Macy's.

Take 1 with Tessa's nose in the way (she's so nosy)

Take 2. You can see a little bit of the stems, which have pearls inside.

This is the best photo I could get of the serving set. It was too difficult to get a good photo of the engraving. But on the server, it has our names and date. On the knife, just the date.

Pearls inside the handles. Also from the Lenox Jubilee Pearl line. Once we got the toasting flutes, we decided we wanted the matching serving set. We ended up registering at Macy's, so we put the set on the registry and got it at the shower.

Mid-Day Update

My coworkers just threw Michael and me a "shower" at lunchtime.

They had lunch catered in from a famous (locally) BBQ joint... soo good. Pulled pork, BBQ chicken breasts, salt potatoes, cornbread... I'm stuffed. There were also glorious fresh tortilla chips and salsa (also from the BBQ place). Yum, yum, yum.

And of course there was a celebratory cake.

So now it's official: That was my last real "indulgence" before the wedding. Well, before the rehearsal dinner. That's my new rule, and I'm sticking to it (maybe).

They also all chipped in and bought us our new down comforter. Fantastic! We need a new one really badly. With our current one, all of the feathers constantly shift down to the bottom of the comforter, weighing it down so it practically falls off the foot of our bed every night until we turn it around. Then we have like three nights of SO much fluff up by our heads. It's ridiculous.

Anyway, now that it's summer, we aren't in dire need of the comforter, but we do still use it. If it's hot, it just inevitably gets kicked off the bed. But between windows open, central air, and an oscillating fan blowing, we are usually chilly at some point during the night. Now we just need to get our new duvet cover and bedding set (sheets, pillows, etc.). Hopefully we'll be able to complete everything after the honeymoon and we'll have a whole new bedroom. Or, at least it will seem like it.

We enjoyed ourselves hanging out with everyone, and it helped to break up the day a little bit. It was such a nice gesture. And now I can't get over how little time I actually have left here at work! Tomorrow, half day Friday, and then only Monday and Tuesday! Whoa!

P.S. I won't be able to get any pics up of the new programs until tomorrow. I'm sorry! But I screwed up and miscalculated how much paper I was going to need, and I ran out. So now I don't have enough of the pages printed to make a full mock-up.

I am going to run to the paper store right after work, finish printing tonight, and then bring them into work tomorrow morning to have them cut. I should have something up tomorrow night!

And really, I don't want to get your expectations up that high... they're really not that fabulous. But you'll see!

Things Remembered = Big Fat Ripoff

I hate Things Remembered.

Sure, I buy things from there and use their services sometimes, but that's mostly because there's no where else to do it.

So, when we were given our Lenox Jubilee Pearl toasting flutes and cake serving set for the wedding, I figured I'd be taking them there to get them engraved. I looked up prices online, which didn't seem too bad, and on Tuesday, I drove to the mall to go and drop the stuff off for engraving.

When I walked in, they told me that I'd have to pay $10 for each item right off the bat, just for carrying them into their store (as opposed to buying them there). In addition, the engraving prices they quoted me were more expensive than those I had found on their website. It would have cost me like $70 just to have this stuff engraved.

I turned around and walked right back out of the store.

I ended up calling around and found a couple of other little shops in town that might be able to do the engraving for us. Well, I say "might"--they said they could--but I want to go in and check them out, see what fonts they can use, etc.

All this work because Things Remembered is a big fat ripoff.

Booked solid.

At least it feels like we are.

I've started to realize that all of the things I've procrastinated on? All those things I said could wait until closer to the wedding? Well, I can't use that excuse anymore. We are close to the wedding.

We have so many upcoming appointments. Our schedules are already busy as it is. Monday and Thursday nights, I have aerobics classes. Tuesday nights, Michael has karate. So usually, during the week, the only nights we have available to run errands or meet with wedding vendors are Wednesdays and Fridays. I can do some things on my own on Tuesdays, but other than that...

Tonight, we went and met with another organist. The first one we met with was not affiliated with the church we're getting married at. He's in Michael's karate class and we thought he would cut us a deal since they know each other. Not so much. It turned out he was more expensive than the guy recommended to us by the coordinator at the church. So I called him and booked him instead. I talked to him today and we were looking at schedules and trying to figure out when we could meet to hear some of the music on the organ in the church and finalize our selections. Things weren't looking good for having it done by the end of May--so he said, "What about tonight?" And there went our relaxing, "nothing-going-on" night.

Next Wednesday, we have to meet with the priest at the church to go over the results of our FOCCUS evaluation that we took a few weeks ago. That will be the last hurdle we have to jump over before we can officially be declared OK to get married in the Catholic church. On May 17, I have my hair trial. On May 20, I have a dress fitting. On May 21, we're meeting with our priest--the one who will perform the ceremony--to go over the details of the wedding and finalize everything with him. I'm also trying to see if I can squeeze in a makeup trial on the same day as my hair trial, but we'll see how that works out.

And there are other meetings to schedule for the beginning of June--DJ, photographers, reception venue walk-through, baker, etc. It's seemingly never-ending. But you know what? Being this busy will certainly make the time fly between now and the wedding. I just hope I don't go crazy.

It's a good thing we have wine. Lots and LOTS of wine, in fact.

You see, my boss gave us our wedding gift early. She came into my office last week and asked if it was OK to bring it into the office some day to give to us. She's the kind of person that gets everything done early (she finishes her Christmas shopping in September/October), so it didn't surprise me that she had purchased a gift already. And I guess she just wanted to get it out of her house. We don't mind; we get to reap the benefits of it early.

And what is it? Our wine fridge.

Hell yeah! So now, including our eight bottle wine rack, we could have as many as 14 bottles of wine on hand at all times. Love it.

I brought the wine fridge home last night. Today, during my lunch break, I took a ride to the liquor store and bought six bottles of wine to stock it up. I mean, come on... if you're going to get a wine fridge, you have to fill it! (And of course, Tess is helping... like always.)

Completely unrelated to the rest of this post, but--seriously--how cute is my dog?? This pic is from Saturday night. She was exhausted and I guess she thought the remote control made an excellent pillow. Honestly, I think she was delirious.

No matter how stressed I get, she never fails to make me smile.

We ate like kings

Today, we went to Bed Bath and Beyond to use our gifts cards we received at the shower. We also received two waffle makers, so we had to return one of them. They gave us store credit, so we found something else to buy with that money, too.

We ended up walking out with a rice cooker, a 5-piece Calphalon gadget set (that we needed very badly--mainly for the can opener since ours sucked), a new sink strainer (it's amazing how good the sink looks now), and... a BLENDER!

Last weekend, since we had such nice weather, we really wanted to make strawberry daquiris. Unfortunately, last summer, the motor in our smoothie maker totally died, and we never replaced it. Instead of getting another smoothie maker, we decided to go with a high-powered, good quality blender. We'll see how it works. I'm hoping to test it out tonight. We even stopped by the new liquor store for some rum. ;)

Once home, we fired up the new rice cooker to help us with dinner. Then we ate dinner using our brand new dinnerware!

We decided to go with an old favorite from Rachael Ray. Delicious! And it certainly looked great on our new dishes.

New Dishes = New Kitchen

The day after the shower, we unpacked, cleaned, and organized the majority of our gifts. However, there were a few things we saved for later. Mainly things that we didn't get all of. For instance, our dishes. We technically received them all at the shower, but my friends got us the second set of them and had to order them to be delivered to our house. They came the Wednesday or Thursday after the shower, but we didn't do anything with them last weekend.

Tonight, we got motivated to pack up the old dishes and unpack the new. We loaded as many as we could into the dishwasher and ran it; we washed the rest by hand. We watched a movie, then put them all away.

We are still waiting on five more pasta bowls (second shelf, left), and another set of the mini bowls (second shelf, center). Hopefully we'll complete the whole dinnerware collection at the wedding.

Now it's like we have a whole new kitchen! We can't wait to eat our first meal on them tomorrow. Gotta think of something good to make. :)

Like kids on Christmas

On Sunday, Michael and I took a few hours to unpack the majority of our shower gifts. We took them out of their boxes, washed everything, and found room for it all. Now, what to do with the boxes... that's a different story.

It was all a bit overwhelming! We got so many great things. We're so grateful for everything and can't wait to put it all to good use.

Here are a few pics:

Checking out our new dinnerware. We're still waiting on the other half of the place settings. My friends from college bought it for us, but it has to be shipped to our house since they didn't have it in stock in the store.

Reading waffle maker instructions. Intriguing. I can't wait to make waffles!

Pyrex bakeware set. Such a great thing to have!

Tessa thought the pile of tissue paper looked comfy.

Tessa and me in the middle of the pile o' gifts! Luckily, our living room does NOT look like that anymore. We were able to get it cleaned up and organized pretty quickly once everything was washed.