Pardon Me for a Minute...

Hey, hey! Yea for a short work week!!!

I hope everyone had a good weekend, I sure did. Lots of rest as I haven't been feeling the best, but I also managed to squeeze in Bryan's birthday dinner as well as some major work on our engagement picture album - which I should hopefully be showing you by the end of the week!

Since this week is a short week, I am planning on doing some major work on the blog frontier - I'm migrating everything to WordPress! As soon as the link is ready, I will be sure to update you all. In honor of the migration, I am going to have the CCB's very first GIVEAWAY!!! Yep, I love free stuff and I am sure you do too! Should be ready by Sunday at the latest, so stay tuned...

So, pardon me for a couple of days while I new and improve everything - it will all be worth the wait!

There Goes My Chance At Queen...

Did anyone else have a crush on him when they were younger?

I did.

(Sigh) There goes my chance at queen… Good thing I found my prince a long time ago.

Good thing I found my prince already. :)

Is anyone else obsessed with the Royal family? I don’t know why, but they fascinate me… Now that William and Kate have officially announced their engagement, I am even more intrigued!!! Earlier this year I was fixated with the Chelsea Clinton wedding and even got my veil inspiration from her. Now I am dying to see what colors Kate picks, what type of dress she chooses, what their first song will be - knowing everything they do will be gorgeous and classic.

You gotta respect this chick

– she waited eight years for a ring!!! I was getting antsy at the one year mark! (Patience is not a word that is commonly associated with me.)

On another coincidental note, my parents got married the same year as Diana and Charles. Now Bryan and I will get married the same year as Kate and William… Not sure that actually means anything expect that I should find a hobby other than stalking celebrities online. 

9.5 Months to Go...

Is this week going fast for anyone else? Loving it!

Does anyone else use TheKnot.com’s checklist to make sure you’re on schedule to have a fabulous wedding? I actually spent a lot of time researching digital checklists and theirs is by far the most comprehensive. I actually do not find TheKnot.com that helpful, aside from the checklist of course.

I have printed myself two copies of the checklist – one for work so I can mull over it during lunch about once a week and one for the wedding bible. While I was looking it over, I discovered that as of Thanksgiving weekend, we will be in the 6 - 8 month bracket! Yikes! I feel like after Christmas, time is going to fly. 

Luckily for me, I have roughly half of the 6 -8 month tasks completed already – yea for being an over-achiever! 

But this is what I do not have done yet:

• Get deposit to our florists – we do have a florist picked out though.
• Get an idea of ceremony musicians and the type of music we want played… NO clue on this one. I was hoping to have someone that we know do the music, but I didn’t realize all of our friends and family are musically challenged… So this one could be difficult.
• Block hotel rooms for guests – this one is half done, I have rooms at one hotel, but need to block a few more at another.
• Fill out your wedding registry – we’ll do this closer to 6 months I think…
• Order and send out save-the-dates… Need to do a lot of work on this one because I am doing them myself, but I have a great idea for it!
• Book ceremony musicians – probably around 6 months.
• Start planning rehearsal dinner… We have an idea of what we want to do, but nothing definite yet.
•  Finalize invitation wording… The wording of the actual invitation is done, but the cards associated with them are not…
• Order wedding invitations and announcements – will do this around the 6 month mark.

Not too terrible of a list – what about you guys? Do you have lots to do for where you are at in your planning or are you way ahead of the game? 

You Know You Want to See More...

... WE'VE BEEN BLOGGED!!!

Sorry, couldn't contain myself any longer. Our photographers emailed me last week and told me they had chosen OUR engagement pictures to put on their blog!

I have a dirty little secret: I've always wanted to be blogged about. Not me blogging about my life, someone else thinking that my life is worth blogging about.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I found out we were going to be featured on their blog... I was even more excited when I figured out this would give me readers a chance to view ALL of our E-pics without my painfully uploading each high-res file.

Here is the link to their blog.

And one more picture for you. (The last one, I promise.)

My Good Deed for the Day

I must say, this Monday was easier than other Mondays have been as of late. I think the extra hour of sleep Saturday night combined with the fact that the sun was actually half way up when my alarm went off was a huge help. J

Today I was at Target buying a baby gift for my matron of honor (she’s due in about 6 weeks!!!) I was browsing the baby gift wrap and this lady randomly came up to me and asked if I knew if there was a wedding section. (No, I was not wearing a red shirt OR khakis.) As she started to walk away she mumbled something about unity candle. I asked her if she had tried Michaels or Hobby Lobby, she said she had and that she didn’t like any of their stuff. We started chatting and I said that I was planning on making mine.

She was intrigued.

I told her I got a pillar candle and two candlesticks and the holders from Ikea like these:

Mind you, I know I am going to decorate these myself, but at this point in my day, I was not exactly sure HOW I was going to decorate them. I rattled off some ideas that she could do.

I think this lady fell in love with me in the three minutes I was talking to her.

I told her some of the other things I was planning and she looked totally amazed. I mean honestly, doesn’t every bride make most of their stuff?

No?

Anyway, I felt pretty good about myself after that. Hopefully I helped her see that you don’t have to buy everything out of the box. I love when I go to weddings and you can just TELL how much time the bride and groom (…mostly the bride…) has spent on all the details. You can really see their personalities come through.

Help give me some more ideas, what are you doing to help bring your personalities into your wedding and reception? 

Cakeballs...Mmm...

As you read in a previous post about our cake topper, we have been planning on doing a dessert bar for our wedding in lieu of a giant cake. My reasons for this is I wanted to be different (or difficult as some associated with the planning process may say) but I also just feel like people don’t really eat cake anymore at wedding receptions. I know I rarely do. But if they have something cool like cookies or cheesecake, I’m all over it!

So, it was settled. We would do a dessert bar and our mom’s friends were going to help bake the goodies to help save on costs… Until reality set in. I started thinking about how difficult it was going to be to coordinate 9 different people baking, getting it all arranged nicely and keeping it fresh.

Then I discovered The Bite-Sized Bakery.

 And my world was complete.

These amazing ladies have started a bakery for just cakeballs! Don’t know what cakeballs are? Let me tell you. To make cakeballs you bake a cake, then take the cake and crumble it into a bowl. Mix the cake with some sort of filling like cream cheese, make into balls, dip in almond bark and enjoy! (Check out Bakerella to see some fantastic cakeballs.)

We met up with one of the gals from Bite Sized Bakery last Sunday to sample a few of these treats, and we were not disappointed. We sampled chocolate raspberry, peanut butter chocolate, lemon, birthday cake, chocolate and spice cake. The ladies kept telling us that we would only need to figure two/person and I was a bit skeptical of that number. I looked at the size of them and was thinking “I could dominate 15 of these EASILY!” Wow, was I wrong. These little babies are dense and filling, if I were attending a wedding, I would probably just stop at one. (I am usually too distracted by cocktails to bother with dessert though…)

The gal we met with had some awesome ideas for set up and they will be coming by the reception hall the day of the big shin-dig to set it all up for us. No dessert-related stress for this girl!

So tell me – what are you guys doing for dessert? A big ol’ cake? Cheesecake? Candy bar? 

The Rest of the E-Pics

The wait is over! Our photographers emailed us a link today with the rest of our engagement pictures - TOTALLY worth the wait. Here are a few of my favs. :) Enjoy!