RSVP count

Well, our invitations have been out a little over a week and I've been doing some major mailbox stalking lately. I used to be the type of person that would check the mail once every other week, now I'm checking the mail every day. I know my constant eye wont make them come in any faster, but I can't seem to help myself!!

After being out for their first full week, we've already gotten in twelve responses! Ten of them have accepted and only two declined. Out of our original 165, I think 12 is a very respectable start. So let's keep those responses coming!

Our invitations are out!!

Well, I no longer have three boxes of invitations sitting in our apartment. As of today, all of our invitations have been mailed out! Austin dropped off the last few at the post office today!! I can't believe we're finally sending them all out! I remember when I first started working on them about eight months ago, I thought that the day to actually be able to send them out would never come!

Be on the lookout for yours and don't forget to send back your RSVP card!

Another month closer

Its been a while since I've posted anything, and that's mostly due to the fact that there isn't anything really to say. I know that with the wedding only two months away, I really should be gearing up for the wedding and working on all of the details but I haven't been. After working and planning an organizing everything for a year and a half, I've gotten burnt out on it all.

I'm already a week into March and I can't say that I've actually gotten anything accomplished yet. All of our invitations are all addressed and sitting in a couple of boxes ready to be mailed out. Austin and I are still in the process of looking for his wedding band but we still haven't been able to find anything that he really likes (that I can afford). Luckily, Austin has been productive. We sat down last week and he finally booked our honeymoon, we're going to Cozumel for a week! He found a great all-inclusive, adults only resort and got a great deal on it. We will be leaving on the Wednesday after the wedding and we'll be gone for a week. That means no phone, no email, no texts, no internet for a whole week! I'm pretty excited about being gone for a whole week, but I know that when I come back I'll have a tone of emails to sort through. But I wont think about that until I get back. No use worrying about something that far in the future.

This weekend, I am going to be productive with wedding stuff. The past month, other than the invitations, I haven't done anything. I know I need to suck it up and get to work so I will. I have an appointment set to have a hair trial on Wednesday and I also have my (hopefully final) dress fitting on Saturday. I know Austin is going to be getting fitted for his tux on Sunday, so I'm going to talk with our ushers/readers to make sure that they get fitted. We are also going to be taking our invitations to the post office some time this week, so another thing checked off of our list. Austin and I also decided that we're going to be taking lessons in order to dance our first dance for the wedding so we should be getting that scheduled soon.

Wow. It looks like I'm back on track and back to being productive!!

Check and Check!

This weekend has been a pretty productive weekend. Since I had Monday off for MLK, I decided to really get to work on all things wedding related.

Saturday, I was able to finally meet with a jeweler in order to discuss my day-of jewelry. It actually took a lot longer than I thought it would, but I'm very happy with what we were able to come up with. I know Anne is going to make me something fantastic, unique and totally me. Anne is also going to be making the jewelry for my Maid of Honor and Bridesmaids, so I'm very excited about that. I was having a hard time finding something that I loved and they would love and that would work with no luck. After a couple hours with Anne, she was able to come up with a couple great ideas! It should take her a couple weeks to make it up, and if its not what I want exactly, she'll redo it and try again. But I have complete faith in her. Bridal party jewelry, check!

I also went to my first fitting on Saturday. I went to A Bridal Blossom, the same boutique that a friend Ashley works at, in order to get this done. Since Ashely was working on Saturday, she was able to not only act as an employee, but she already knew my personality and how I wanted to look. And since she's going to be doing my hair on the big day, she was able to figure out exactly what she would do for the wedding. Nancy, the owner, was a huge help and was able to not only get everything pinned, but she came up with a fantastic bustle! The detail on the back of my dress had me worried about the bustle and I couldn't think of how to get it done and keep the details, but she did it!! Nancy also offers a service that we are taking advantage of: On the day of the wedding, she will be on site for two hours two steam my dress, the flower girl, the MOG and the bridesmaids' dresses. Now I don't have to worry about getting it to the INFOMART and making sure it still looks great. Nancy will take care of that for me! First fitting, check! Second fitting, scheduled!


Since I was off on Monday, I was able to sit down and get all of our invitations going out to the parents' friends addressed and assembled. Since both Austin's mom and dad are helping with the wedding, I wanted to give them the chance to get us a list of people they wanted to be there. Both of their lists consist of about 75 people. My big goal for January was to get everyone included on their lists an invitation ready to be sent out. We've got all of those invitations assembled, stamped, labeled, and the RSVPS have stamps. All that is left is to drop them into a mailbox at the end of next month! Parent invitations, check!!

Today, I was able to book the rooms for the wedding party for the night before and of the wedding. Being the kind of person I am, I've decided to pay for the first night for the entire wedding party. Since a lot of people in the wedding party are taking the time to come to Dallas from Arkansas, I figure its one nice thing Austin and I can do for them. Wedding party hotels booked, check!

What a week!

What a week this has been! Not only has work been a complete mess, but working on the wedding is finally starting to get me stressed out.

When I got back to work on Tuesday, I quickly decided that never again will I take off two and a half weeks. I had mountains of work piled up on my desk to sift through as well as new projects that cropped up while I was away. We also decided to get rid of our interim food service company in the building early Wednesday morning and had to scramble to provide food to the tenants in the building. For those that didn't know, four inch heels and a suit are not the best combination when you are going to be running around the building, hauling boxes and serving 500 sandwiches to hungry people. After that was taken care of, I had to work with a couple coworkers in order to find a food service provider that would be able to start the next day. I'm a little proud to say that we were able to get this taken care of and now have someone here to provide service until our new company can get set up.

I've also started to get a little stressed out about the wedding. I've started to put all of our invitations together and I'm working on printing out all of our labels for our invitations which has caused me to realize just how quickly things are going to come together. We're going to be sending out our invitations at the end of February, which means I want to have everything ready to be taken to the post office by the middle of February. I know that may seem a little silly of me, but I'm a bit overly obsessive and want to make sure nothing goes wrong. I've also started to worry about all of the little things that need to be done (favors, out of town bags, bridal shots, etc.). I keep trying to remind myself that we have all of the big things nailed down and I don't need to worry, but I can't help it! I worry.

Its a new year!

I've been taking a lot of time off from wedding planning lately and as soon as the clock struck midnight and it was a new year, there was only one thing I could think of: I'm getting married this year!

I've already started working on my checklist for this month and I've been able to check off a couple of things from my checklist and its only three days into the month!!

So far I have been able to complete the following things from my to-do list:

1. Assemble all of our invitations About 90 of our 150 invitations have been assembled
2. Order rings
3. Order tuxes for FI, GM and readers
4. Have dress altered   I have an appointment set up to have my dress altered on the 15th of January
5. Decide on my accessories and the BP accessories.
6. Finalize room designs with our event coordinator, event designer and florist
7. Finalize any changes with my florist (I decided in the last two weeks to completely change our flowers...)
8. Address invitations going out to any people our parents are inviting
9. Get FI a passport   Paperwork is printed out and he's started working on completing it
10. Book the honeymoon   We've narrowed it down, we want to go to an all inclusive resort in Cozumel!
11. Order cakes   I got this taken care of already!!

Day 6: Whatever Tickles Your Fancy

Since today I'm supposed to write about whatever tickles my fancy, I figured I would use this as a great time to catch up on everything that has been happening lately.

Well, work has been absolutely crazy lately. Since the year is starting to come to a close, everyone in the office has been trying to work on budgets and calendars and holiday parties and all of that fun end of the year work. I've also come to the realization that I have quite a lot of vacation time left and not much time to take it, so I've been trying to figure out a time when I will actually be able to use my vacation days without completely inconveniencing everyone else. And having to deal with too much make up work. I hate taking a couple days of and then having a mountain of work once I get back...Anyways... Work has been pretty crazy lately.

And then there's all of the wedding stuff...

I've been able to finally pay off our photographer in full, which means I have one less bill to worry about! All $2500 has been completely paid off, with help to Austin's dad. We've got our florist paid in full, my dress is done, 2/3 of my bridesmaids and most of the caterer. I've been pretty stressed out about all of the wedding madness that I thought had to be done and we had to pay for, but I've come to realize that most of what we can do right now is already done.

I've also ordered and received all of our Save the Dates in. We had our engagement pictures taken a little over a month ago and we loved the way all of our pictures turned out. After showing them off to our family and friends, we realized that we wanted to do Save the Dates just for the fact that we could show off all of our pictures. After all, we had all of these great pictures, why not use them for something? So, we looked around on Vistaprint and found a great deal on Save the Date postcards . We were able to get 200 for about $50. Since that was such a fantastic deal, we decided to go ahead and order them and get them sent out by Thanksgiving. (And yes, the "we" I"m referring to here is more "me". Austin really didn't care too much as long as it didn't cost too much.)

I've been working on getting all of our addresses put together so I can make labels for all of our Save the Dates. Then I have to get stamps, which shouldn't be too much for postcards. Another great thing about getting our Save the Dates out is that we will have all of our addresses put together so that will be one less thing for us to worry about before we send out our actual invitations. So consider that two checks, one for our save the dates and one for having all of our addresses together!

On top of the wedding and work, I've also been trying to get things ready for Austin and I to go see Deathly Hallows Part I. Being the wonderful fiance that he is, Austin has agreed to actually get into it and dress up. If we weren't going to the midnight premiere I wouldn't have begged him to dress up, but we are. And he is. So in what little free time I have I've been trying to make a Gryffindor scarf for him to wear. I've also been looking around for a sweater that would pass as being a Hogwarts school uniform. And I finally found something! With less than two weeks to go, I found us sweaters! Now all that's left is for me to find a cute pleated, gray skirt....

Our Invitations are Done!!

Well, all of our invitations are done! After many hours and a lot of trial and error, they are all finally all printed out! I finished assembling everything last night, all that I have to do is start putting all of the inserts and the invitation cards into the pocket-folds! After that, its a trip to the Post Office to figure out how much all of the postage will be. And I'll have to start printing up all of the wrap-around labels for the addresses. And stamping our address on everything...


Maybe there's still more to do with these than I thought....

In any case, the biggest part is complete! Even Austin was impressed with the finished product!

The Pocket-folds are Done!!

Yesterday I spent most of the day working on all of our pocket-folds. I was able to finally able to finish cutting, measuring, scoring and gluing together 150 pocketfolds. I felt like it was a huge accomplishment to finally get it all done. I'd been putting off finishing them since it has been a huge undertaking, but I'm glad to finally get it all done. About two (or three) months ago, I had been able to measure and cut down all of my 11"x17" card stock.

But then I stopped. I don't know why, but I was burnt out on all of the wedding work. And since Austin hasn't been too interested in the planning or anything, it was hard to get motivated to get back to work.

I guess it was because Jessica and I had been talking about wedding stuff while she was here, but I suddenly got the urge to finish my project. I don't really know why it happened, but I sat down on Friday and started scoring everything. Sunday I spent the day cutting tape down and taping up every flap so that I had pockets on my pocket-folds. I would not recommend this project to most people, but I'm picky and didn't want to spend almost $500 on the invitations I wanted. And I didn't realize how much of a project it would be. Well, I knew, I just didn't think it would be quite this big,

I'm hoping I can finalize my wording this week for my three inserts and my invitations. I'd like to start printing them all this week, but I'll be realistic and shoot for the middle of next week. I think I'll be able to start putting them together in about two weeks or so... I'm hoping. My goal is to have the entire invitation, all 150 of them, put together by the end of the month.

If I don't get distracted I think its possible. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can stick with it!

And, to feel like I actually did something, I'm going to show off my template for the invitations. Its not perfect, but this was my first one I made and I'm using it as my guide. What do you guys think?

I need a florist

So I've come to realize how badly I need to start making appointments with florists. I don't know why, but this is one of the things I'm dreading the most. I really like these, and they have the right blue I'm looking for:

I just cant bring myself to actually start looking for a florist! I've talked to Austin's mom (who has been WONDERFUL, just saying, and I'm really hoping she knows somebody that can help me out. I do feel a little accomplished when I'm still 9 months out. We have the DJ, Photographer, venue, officiant (as of today), the menu, my dress, my Maid of Honor's dress is ordered and I've started the invitations. I will finish the pocketfolds this weekend. I have to! I just feel like I got off to a great start and now I'm falling behind. I haven't been doing wedding stuff for a while, now I realize how much I need to!