Engagement Pictures for all to see!

Finally! I got the cd for the engagement pictures we took at the beginning of January, freezing in snow at Keeneland Park in Lexington, Kentucky. If you want to check them out, look at our website's Multimedia Gallery at the album "Engagement Pictures." Here's a small sampling:

Yes, we are freakishly pale.

I love how the space between us in this one kinda looks like a heart.

What do you think?

My Always Valentine

Andrew sent me flowers for Valentine's Day. Beautiful yellow roses with pinky/red edges and a cute little teddy bear. Sorry the picture is kinda dark but they are lovely.

I'm so proud of him for taking the initiative.

And I love roses. So very much.

And I love Andrew. So very much. Much more than roses.

I have learned, though, that I should be thankful mom convinced me to go with a florist for the wedding, since I think we can all agree that my flower arranging skills are nowhere near DIY wedding level. Actually, my flower arranging skills pretty well suck.

Doesn't matter for today, though. Roses are gorgeous no matter what you do with them.

In Memory

I'd like to start off by saying that I have been blessed with the most amazing grandparents ever. My dad's parents have been happily married for over 60 years now, which was amazing to grow up with them being nearby.

My mom's parents were married almost as long, for over 59 years until my grandmother's death on December 26, 2006. My grandpa died this past year as well, and I miss them terribly.

All the little rituals I had with each of them that my parents didn't know about when I was little. How I'd go to church with grandpa on Sunday morning so I could stay with him on Saturday night and play checkers for Andes mints he kept in an old check box and watch the Lawrence Welk show with him and grandma. How they taught me the words to the songs. Helping grandma put together her intricate puzzles.

I wanted them to be at my wedding this June.

I'm going to carry them with me, instead. Yesterday I bought a locket pin from Ebay, and I'm going to shrink copies of the pictures of them that always sat on their dresser at their house to put in the frames. I'll attach it to the ribbon binding my bouquet.

Here are some pictures of the locket in it's current state:

The Invitations are Here!

After collecting and correcting email proofs of the text for my invitation, reception card, and printed outer envelopes, it only took a few weeks for my invitations to arrive from Davids Bridal.

I have to admit they're not really the invitations of my dreams, but those dream-invitations are letterpressed and crazy-expensive, so for the moment I'm not even thinking about them. They are exactly as I proofed the text, and the ribbon will exactly match the blue that runs through the rest of the wedding theme in the form of my sash and the bridesmaids dresses.

Overall, I'm happy with them. They fit the theme and the overall image I was aiming for, without breaking my budget to pieces. Though I wish I'd found rectangular rather than square cards, simply because of postage concerns. I may just do custom stamps, or look at international stamps since I think those would actually cover the cost of the mailings.

Though I am dreading all the assembly fun I have ahead of me...and have already started practicing my best handwriting (need to work to make the numbers match the lettering) for addressing in the future.

Now to collect actual addresses for people on our guest list.

Did anyone else have to settle on wedding invitations that they liked rather than ones they were completely in love with? It can't be that uncommon.

Catering Woes

I need to just sit down and choose a catering company, hammer out contract details, get an estimate, and make a deposit.

The company I had been looking at just raised their rates from what I had previously found, and it's my own fault that I didn't schedule a phone meeting or just go ahead and book them to reserve the date before they changed to lock in the rates.

It's not like I'm looking at complicated food. Just appetizers. After all, the reception is starting at 8 PM. I just don't think that the price for an appetizer buffet should be the same as a simple buffet meal. It just seems ridiculous to equate the two.

Mostly I'm looking for a menu I can live with. The dessert buffet idea got canned because it seemed that serving massive quantities of sugar and alcohol seemed like a recipe for disaster, even though it's the closest to what I would want.

Which is essentially a massive sugar fest. Or carnival/fair food, like mini burgers, boneless barbecue chicken wings, funnel cakes, and cotton candy. To me, that sounds perfect and fun...but probably not what is actually going to happen.

Well, I just emailed the bakery/caterer who I'd looked at originally last spring and summer. Right now her prices and options seem the most reasonable, and it's really close to the reception site so the food wouldn't have to be driven through the majority of Kansas City before it reaches the guests, which is always a good option to try. We'll see how this goes.

Missing Missouri

Planning a wedding, and graduate school, and work, can take a lot out of a person. It's even harder when your support base is several hundred miles away. So I tend to go home to Missouri at least once a month.


Including this past weekend, when I was headed toward a giant snowstorm. Luckily, I planned ahead and stopped for the night at the Holiday Inn Express in Mount Vernon, IL when the weather started getting bad. They let me have a pet-friendly room so Archie and I could be comfortable, had a restaurant that delivered quickly to the room, and free internet so I could track the storm's progress.

It meant a half a day's delay in getting there, but at least I got to see my sister, Andrew, and my mom and dad and Aunt Linda. Andrew and I went to brunch with Aunt Linda on Saturday, then my parent's came up and had dinner with us. We even played beer pong in my sister's house basement (with mom and me playing with grape juice).

That trip was exactly what I needed to stay on track in my life. Which is why I make the trek so often. The hassle and the expense is worth it to me.

Finally, Engagement Pictures

I just got the link to our engagement pictures in an album online, and as soon as I get the cd of the images I'll load them onto the wedding website in an album everyone can see. Or maybe when I get home I'll post the instructions for how to navigate the password protected website.

Soon you'll be able to see them, is what I'm trying to say.

And they're...okay. Andrew and I are not the most photogenic people in the world, and we took these pictures outside with snow on the ground, freezing our tails off. But I do like them, overall.

Right now I'm thinking of getting an 8"x10" to hang over the fireplace in the apartment. As soon as I get the cd, I'm going to start working on a photo album guest book of Andrew and I growing up to our engagement pics, leaving blank pages for people to sign with Sharpies. Meaning someone will have to be at the table to make sure everything doesn't get closed when wet and smudge, but I really like the idea of having a guest book that serves another purpose as well.

Something that I'll actually go and look at in the future, instead of packing into a box and forgetting somewhere.