Wedding: Save the Date Invites!

It’s finally time to show you the Save the Date cards! I’ve been dying to show this on the blog, but I wanted to wait until the majority had arrived at their destination. Well, I think it is finally safe to show you the finished product!

First, some background.

Zach and I met through his sister, Courtney (who is the photographer behind these great shots!) We had known each other for a while before we started hanging out one-on-one, because I’m good friends with his sister. When we started making plans independent of other people, it was to have horror movie nights in October. We kind of bonded over our love of scary movies!

Because of that, either Courtney or I had the idea to make the engagement photo session  movie themed. I can’t remember who initially had the idea, but the ideas for the individual photos was all Courtney. She did an amazing job, even designing the layout of the card (which turned out so nice!)

Without further ado….

Isn’t it amazing!? I really have the most talented sister-in-law-to-be!

Also, our friend Patrick also has to be mentioned, because without him we wouldn’t have been able to do this. You see, his church is located in an old movie theater, so he was able to change the marquee for us, and let us in to snap the movie-watching photos. Courtney made the “green screen” in PhotoShop and projected it onto the movie screen. We used a spotlight behind our heads as the “projector” and a cell phone light shined at our faces to make it look like we were watching a movie.

I’m so, so happy with how it turned out.

Would you like to hear a funny story about what a rookie I am? I got these printed via Vistaprint, and got an amazing deal using a previously purchased Groupon. Well, I counted my guests and placed my order. Then, a few days later, I thought about it. Wait, I have 130 guests, but most of them are families and only need one card. Oops! So, if you need an extra just let me know. I’ve got plenty 🙂

A Few Friday Favorites

Boy, do I love some good alliteration…don’t you? 🙂

Friday is in full swing, and I am having trouble wiping this smile off of my face. I’m having a good, productive day so far, and I’m not getting stressed out by the millions of things I need to do this weekend. Here are some of the great things that I’m smiling about:

– I spent some time on the phone last night with a potential caterer, and then my mother, talking about our wedding in September, which got me excited about the wedding all over again! Sure, I get to look at these beauties every day: 

…which reminds me of our upcoming nuptials, but discussing the big day is both overwhelming and exciting. There is a lot to do, but luckily we have 10 months to do it, and I’m confident with all the help we have, it will get done.

– Speaking of my lovely fiance, we had a nice Subway lunch today. Usually we go home for lunch, so we will watch the previous night’s Daily Show while we eat. Today, we just ate and chatted and it was quite nice. After we ate, we went over to The Wild Ramp to pick up a gift for someone. The Wild Ramp is our local year-round Farmer’s Market. It is completely non-profit, and I love stopping by. While we were there, I decided that I must finally try some Jeni’s Ice Cream:

I’ve been dying to try the Salty Caramel flavor. They didn’t have any, but the above flavor just spoke to me. I can’t wait to grab spoonfuls of this for the next week or so 🙂 The other really great thing that I saw was this:

That’s me!

The Wild Ramp recently had a Kickstarter Campaign, and the put up the names of all the folks who donated on their bulletin board. This was all the thanks I needed!

– After a hard week of scrounging through almost bare cupboards to come up with dinner every night (we desperately need to do some grocery shopping!), I’ve reached my reward: Sushi for dinner tonight! Hooray!

Question of the Day:
What is the best thing that has happened to you today? 

Wedding: Guest List, Attendants, Venue Shopping and My Decor Inspiration Board

I have jumped right into wedding planning. For someone who was never really that interested in having a wedding at all, I sure have embraced the idea quickly!

Of course, it helps that all of my friends and family are probably as excited about it as I am. I don’t think of my wedding day as my day — it’s OUR day — and not just for me and Zach. So many people have contributed to our relationship, love us, are cheering for us. That makes us a stronger couple so despite the fact that I never really was interested in having a wedding (I really thought we’d go the elopement or Justice of the Peace route), I’ve embraced it because I want to create a beautiful day that we can share with the people we care about the most.

Our plan for the day is a low-stress, lovely, DIY affair with some delicious food, drinks and a whole lot of love. So, we’ve started from the beginning.

Step 1: The Date
While this isn’t set in stone (I need to make sure we have a venue before I can say for sure), we have decided on September 28th, 2013. Fall in WV is a great time to have a wedding, as there are tons of trees changing colors. I also just love the fall!

Step 2: The Guest List
This part was the first tough part. I want to invite everyone, but we can’t. We have a very small budget. It’s very hard to figure out who to invite and who to leave off.  Right now we’re just adding everyone and figuring it out later.

Step 3: The Attendants
We both have picked the friends and family who will stand next to us while we commit to the rest our lives together. I can’t announce Zach’s picks yet, as he hasn’t asked them (I have — I’m way less patient than he is), so I’ll save introductions for another post.

Step 4: The Venue
We’ve started making appointments to look at venues, even though our guest list isn’t set in stone. As I’ve mentioned we are on a tight budget (prepare to hear that a lot), so right now I’m restricting my search to anything our Parks Board has to offer, which is a lot! Today, we went to see this place: 

St. Cloud Commons

At a very reasonable $170/day, I was excited about this, and they do have lots and lots of (pretty) outdoor space, with lots of trees (which will be great in the fall!)  The website says it seats about 100, but it’s very small. I don’t think we’d be able to fit 100 people in there having dinner, with a dance floor. So, St. Cloud Commons isn’t for us. On to the next one!

Step 5: Dreaming about everything!
I’ve just been spending pretty much all of my time thinking about how I want it to look (but that’s not as important as how it will feel), what I’d like my dress to look like, and how wonderful it will be to announce my intention to spend the rest of my life with my best friend to all of the people I love! I’m very excited! The other day I was going through Pinterest and dreaming about all the decor, table decorations, etc. when I put this together. I call it a ‘vision board’ for decor and table centerpieces:

Image source: Who knows! Pinterest!

Bright yellow mums, bottles painted grey (not blue like in the photo), tissue paper poms hanging from the ceiling. It’s all going to very DIY and fun.

So, yes. It’s all a big jumble of excitement right now, but I have no doubt I’ll be able to pull this together. I’ve been reading a few books too, which I highly recommend. I’m all about keeping wedding planning low-stress, as inexpensive as possible, and not making it all about the bride. I pledge to include Zach (when he wants to be included, sometimes he just doesn’t have an opinion and that’s fine) at all junctures, and rely on the expertise of my wise bridesmaids (they truly are). I also pledge to remember that the only thing that must happen on September 28th, 2013 is that we must end up married by the end of the day. Regardless of anything else, if we are married at the end of the day, it will be a success.

Here are the books I’ve been reading:

A Practical Wedding by Meg Keene. This is a great book! It’s easy (even at the very beginning of wedding planning) to get caught up in the millions of details that wedding blogs, magazines, and even well meaning people want to tell you are so important, but Meg reminds us that the most important thing is getting married. One of the first exercises Meg has you do is to print out one of those exhaustive bridal checklists. Then, you take a red pen and circle the essential things. Which basically are: a person to marry, an officiant and clothes. That’s it. Then, take the green pen and circle the things that are most important to you. Not what everyone tells you is most important, but what you think is important. Then take the red pen again and cross everything else out. That doesn’t mean they won’t be included in your wedding, but it gives you permission to not stress out about it. That was a very fun exercise! You can also read Meg’s blog here.

 

 

Your Wedding Your Way by Sharon Naylor hits the same chord as Keene’s book. It’s not about tradition, it’s about what you want for your day. I know, above I said it’s not just your day, and that’s right, but it’s also not every Tom, Dick and Harry’s day either. I’ll be honest I just started this one, but so far it’s great.

You can find all of my book and DVD recommendations in my Amazon Store here.

Question of the day:
I want to hear about your wedding, or a fun wedding you’ve been to! Go! 

Post-vacation weight gain

I had the best of intentions for this blog while I was on vacation. I was going to post a few times, filling you in on my awesome adventures.

However, like I like to say, “Life got in the Way”

The vacation started off with a bang, with Zach asking me to marry him. After that, my goal to have a stress-free vacation was pretty easy, because I was floating on cloud nine. I’ve always assumed that Zach and I would get married, but the fact that he planned this all out and bought me a gorgeous ring made me feel incredibly special. Now, I get to plan a wedding! That’s actually not something I ever thought that I’d want to do, but recently the idea is growing on me in a big way.

We had the best time. Our house was out of this world incredible, with a pool, a hot tub and direct beach access. Besides a rainy day trek to the Aquarium and a night out for dinner, we spent most of  our time lounging around the house, alternating between the pool and the beach. For your viewing pleasure (and mine), here are some photos:

From top left, our beach, the sunrise, some boys lounging by the pool, sunset, more pool and our last evening at sunset.

Since we’ve been back in town, the weather has been overcast and very humid. I think now that my beach trip is over, I’m ready for cool fall weather!

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Now, this is a health and fitness blog, so let’s talk about the elephant in the room: Weight Gain. I didn’t practice much moderation while I was away. I was happy and relaxed so I ate (and drank) whatever I wanted — and a lot of it.

I’m not terribly proud of this, but the important thing is to recognize it and move on. The other thing that happened was that I didn’t get my exercise in like I would have liked. I went for a run three times, once on the beach (that’s hard!). We got home Sunday evening and I haven’t done a bit of exercise since. I’m not going to panic, but I just don’t feel like I have it in me right now. I need to get on a plan, and quick. So, I present you with my my Plan to Lose the Vacation Weight and Prepare for my Wedding:

1. Resume counting calories: As we know, no amount of exercise will cancel out a poor diet, so my first goal is to resume counting calories using My Fitness Pal. I have been successful using this app in the past, but once you reach a comfortable weight, there comes a time when you have to toss out the calorie counter and go with your gut, so to speak. I’ve done that, it worked, but now I need to lose a few pounds so I’m back!
2. Get back on my training schedule: This is going to be hard. Exercise is a habit, and once you break it, even for a short amount of time, it’s hard to get back on track. So I will make my training schedule for the rest of the week and I will stick to it. I will report my food and exercise here to be held accountable.
3. Cut back on alcohol during the week: Since vacation was a bit of a drink-a-thon, it won’t kill me to stop drinking alcohol except on the weekends.
4. Reduce sugar and grains: As we all know, this is a sure-fire way to lose weight. I’ve become quite accustomed to dessert, and I’m going to have to start subbing fruit instead.
5. Greatly increase my strength training: Even though I only want to lose a few pounds, I’ve noticed some extra flab and even after I lose those 3 or so lbs of vacation weight, I want to gain some muscle. So I will devise a strength training plan that I will stick to for 6 weeks. I will post a plan here tomorrow.

As a way to be held accountable, here are my stats:

My comfortable, usual weight is 148 lbs. This morning, I weighed in at 151.7. Not terrible, and definitely doable. The main issue I have is that I have some flab, so the strength training in addition to my half-marathon training will help with that.

Question of the Day:
What do you do when you know you need to lose a few pounds? 

Big News!

It has been quite the vacation so far! We arrived yesterday around 3 and after quite a long check in, we finally all got settled into our house. This house is so lovely. This is the view from the back deck: 

 

We are just in paradise. Emerald Isle is an adorable place. Apparently the whole island is a turtle sanctuary, and right up the beach from us, there are turtle eggs: 

 

We had a great time the first night, but we were sleepy from the long drive, so we hit the hay pretty early. Zach had mentioned that he wanted to take an early morning walk on the beach, so we headed out around 7 or so. It was a lovely morning and I was just busy watching all the birds and taking photos of the sunrise: 

….when Zach asked if he could ask me a question. And then, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him!!! 

Photo courtesy of Zach’s sister Courtney, who might have been as excited as I was! (which is awesome, so glad to have a new sister)

I always knew that Zach was the one, but I never expected this or saw it coming at all. Apparently when Zach went golfing last week, that was actually code for ring shopping! And I bought it hook, line and sinker. It helps that I’m totally gullible!

Right now, my cheeks hurt from smiling so hard. I’ve never been so happy, today is the best day of my life. I can’t wait to marry the man of my dreams! 

Question of the Day: 
Are you married? How did you or your significant other pop the question?