Shower weekend!

This weekend Ben and I went up to New Jersey to do a million and one things for the wedding! We ended up getting them all done, which was awesome.

We flew up Thursday night and hung out in the airport in Philly for 3 hours waiting for Ben's best friend and our best man Kyle to get in, and so got to my parents' at about 11:30. Ben's mom had flown in from Nebraska a few days before, so it was nice to see everyone, and it felt like a sleepover party!

Friday morning my sisters and I got our hair and makeup trials, and both Emily and Kristen did awesome jobs! We all looked gorgeous, which was good, because Ben and I were getting our engagement pictures done that afternoon, as soon as he got back from driving an hour and a half each way to the tux shop his cousin recommended.

We took the train into Philly and Kyle and Ben's mom walked around while Ben and I met our photographer, Isabel March. She was actually one of the first vendors we picked, recommended to us by the coordinator at the Lambertville Inn, Melle, and we both fell in love with her pictures on her blog. Having awesome pictures of the wedding is really important to us, I want to look at them for the rest of our lives!

Here are a few from this weekend. This is Ben being pensive, though I love his little smile:


Ben said he set that one as his background and has gotten lots of compliments on it already!


So awesome! They make me smile every time I see them :) I can't wait to see the whole set!

My hair amuses me. I'll have to get the pics we took right after the trial from my mom, I started out with lots of curls but after I got changed and walked around in windy Philly, all the curls coalesced into a 2 or 3 megacurls.

So after canoodling around Philly, we ate delicious cupcakes from Reading Terminal Market, which had icing piped into the middle of them umm so good, picked up Kyle and Ben's mama Polly and went back to my parents' house just in time for my Grandmother and niece's joint birthday party! Family parties are fun, it was nice to be able to see everyone and introduce Polly and Kyle to them, so they'll have met them before the wedding.

Saturday was the wedding shower! It was at a beautiful golf course and everyone seemed to have a nice time. We got very nice and generous gifts and wore silly ribbon hats and managed to talk to everyone there twice. I can understand better now why people seem a bit dazed on their wedding days, I get nervous being the center of attention after not long at all, and there was less than a third of the people who will be at the wedding there! I'll have to get some pics from my mom of this too, although there were some on facebook by the time we got home :)

We napped that afternoon, then had cheesesteaks and panzarottis for dinner. We went and got water ice and ate it in the car with the heat on, since it was about 40 degrees out! I love that there was still a line for it though. Then we went to a birthday party for a friend of mine and drank YuengLing, the beer of choice in Jersey.

Sunday we got up early yet again and drove up to Lambertville and tasted the food for the reception and the cake. We made good choices, I think :)

We were home again Sunday night. The Kitten watched the Discovery channel with us, she is so odd. She ignores the tv most of the time, but for some reason Life caught her attention. I told her I would record the Fish episode of it for her, but it was bedtime for Kittens and Mandas.

Sick argh and weddingness

I hate being sick argh argh argh. I got an H1N1 flu shot Monday morning and started feeling yucky, by Tuesday my head was congested and pounding and my joints were achy and then I managed to twist my back in a weird way and pulled something I think. Stayed home from work Tuesday, which sucks because I don't get nearly as many sick days as I think I should have now, and tried to come in yesterday but ended up leaving at noon and going home and crashing.

I feel betterish today, but I hate complaining about my back hurting and being sick so instead I shall complain about weddingness!

I want to be done with the wedding planning already! I've planned so much why is there still more! We have the reception place, the ceremony place, the officiant finally, the photographer the DJ the hair and makeup people, my dress is in my closet with my shoes, my brideswomen have ordered their dresses, and I even just got some slinky things to wear on the honeymoon that look even better on than I was expecting. I am ready to be done! But there are still flowers and invitations and transport and the tuxes to go.

It's been kind of surprising actually, finding out what I really care about for the wedding and what I'm like, meh whatevs it will be fine. The cake, for example, I love to bake and I love desserts, I thought I'd be more interested in the cake. It comes with our reception package, though, and the place we're having it at has awesome food and awesome desserts, so I'm pretty happy to leave it up to them. We'll pick flavors when we do our whirlwind visit in March, and probably a shape and some sort of decoration, but I'm really not thinking about it too much. I think Ben actually cares more about it than me, which is fine.

The flowers are boring me to tears. I don't care about them, I don't want to look at pictures of centerpieces, I don't want to decide anything about them. I just want white roses and blue hydrangea to magically appear there and be pretty and casually elegant and not look overdone.

But then we ordered our wedding rings this weekend. I was not expecting to feel so emotional about them, but just knowing that soon we will be able to see them and hold them and wear them sends shivers down my spine. Soon I will have the ring that has the other half of our pattern on it, and he will have the ring with the perfect mirror image of it, that complements mine perfectly and that no one else will ever match. Our rings are gorgeous and I love them. They're one of the only things I'd picked out before we actually got engaged.

We also need our plane tickets to Hawaii for the honeymoon, actually. I should look into that too.

Home again

So we're home again. I'll get some pics from my camera tonight so I can post them.

We flew on a plane and hung out in airports full of strange people, so of course we both caught a cold. Luckily we weren't sick up there, but we both woke up with stuffy noses and sore throats today. We might also just be allergic to Houston, it has some of the worst air quality I've ever seen.

And it's cold and rainy out, and I couldn't spend the day snuggled up in bed with the cat the way I'd prefer. Of course I'd always prefer snuggling with her to going to work, but you know. It doesn't pay as well.

There were people smoking inside at the party at my ex-best friend's house, and so our coats and the scarf I just made got all smelly, ick. The scarf is washable, luckily, and I ended up leaving my coat on my parents' porch to air out, figuring I wouldn't need it too much here, but of course now it's freezing here. Literally! The low on Friday will be 31 F! I can't take this kind of thing. I hate hate hate the cold, it makes me achy and sad and tired and grumpy. I need to live on the equator, or possibly the surface of the sun.

Our vacation was awesome though! We both really needed one. Thanksgiving was sooo good, my Aunt cooked and my Mom brought a bunch of sides, and they are both awesome cooks. Then we went to my cousin's ginormous house and B. beat him at pool, and only then told him he'd been up for 36 hours and hadn't played pool in about a year, which amused me :)

Saturday we went up to Lambertville and visited the park we'll get married in and the Inn the reception will be in, and went to the Church of the Missing Pastor to see if he was still alive. There was a lady there who claimed he'd "just stepped out," but had us leave him a note on what she said was his desk. Oddly she insisted we put it in a sealed envelope, which only makes sense if this "Pastor" is actually a spy and regularly receives secret communication from other spies posing as couples who want to be married. Even now he's probably busy decoding our message to try to find out where the documents are hidden. He's certainly not busy doing anything like, you know, calling us back.

7 months and 20 days!

Til we get married! Tonight after work I'm going to pick up the dress I'm going to be wearing! It's in, it's bustled, it fits perfectly, I love it, and I cannot wait until he sees it. That won't be for the aforementioned 7 months and 20 days (and probably about 8 hours from now) when I am walking down the aisle, trying desperately not to trip and fall or forget how to walk, as I am capable of doing. I haven't had any more dreams about having to get married in jeans or a bathrobe since I ordered it, yay! Now I just have to figure out where to keep it for 7 months, and how and when to get it to New Jersey.

Most of the big wedding planning is done, the only big-ish thing left is the minor detail of someone to actually perform the ceremony. We had what seemed like a very nice pastor who was all set to do the ceremony, at least until he was kidnapped by dragons and held for ransom on the sun. Or whatever happened to him, I have no idea, because he hasn't returned emails or phone calls for 5 months. I sent my sister out to see if she could find him at his church, but no dice there either. So I need to see if his parents are ok with a non-denom person doing the ceremony. All else fails, I know one of my friends would get internet-certified for me, or since we're technically getting married in PA we can get a Quaker license and just need 2 witnesses for it.So we will be married, even if that pastor has accidentally traveled back in time and prevented his own birth!

Wedding Updates!

My dress is in! I had too many dreams where I was walking down the aisle wearing a bathrobe, or jeans, or my high school prom dress because I never picked out a wedding dress, so I ordered it possibly a bit early. But it's getting the bustle put in and I will get to take it home soon! Now I just have to figure out where to keep it in my apartment, and how and when to get it to Jersey.

My shoes are also in! They are incredibly awesome and I have to restrain myself from not wearing them all the time, I love them so much. I wore them when I tried on my dress and it is the perfect length with them on!

My brideswomen have picked out their dresses! I wanted them to be comfortable and feel attractive in their dresses, so I gave them a color and asked them to pick out whatever dress they liked. They ended up all liking the same dress, and it looks awesome on all of them!

We also (finally finally finally) have a wedding ceremony location! We will be married at the General Greene Pavilion in Washington Crossing Park, next to beautiful old trees and a green grassy field. Unless it rains, in which case we will be married in the Riverside Ballroom in the Inn at Lambertville Station, next to the rain falling on the Delaware. Unless something terrible happens to the Inn, in which case we will be married at the courthouse. Always have two backups, my father always says!

Because even if it rains and the food is terrible and the music sucks and my centerpieces are uninspiring and the cake falls off the table and people have to wait in line to use the bathroom, as long as we end up married at the end of the night, I will be happy. That is the goal, I have it written across the top of my wedding spreadsheets so I won't forget it.

We have a wedding posse!

We finally got to officially ask everyone we wanted to stand up with us at our wedding, and they all said yes!

My brideswomen (I don't like the "maids" in bridesmaids, all of mine are grown women and that sounds so undignified to me) are my sisters and B's sister. When we thought about our wedding party, my sisters sprang to mind immediately, they are my best friends. I'm very excited to be getting a new sister out of the deal, also, and I can't wait for them to all meet!

B's groomsmen are his best friend from high school, a very great guy, his best friend from college whom I'm excited to finally meet after hearing so much about, and my sister's husband! B said that he was so welcoming and accepting of him as a new member of our apparently somewhat intimidating-to-new-people family he would love for him to stand up with him when he becomes an official member. He's so sweet! That must be why I'm marrying him :)

Our ringbearer will be my nephew and our flower girl my niece. They will be both be so adorable no one will be able to stand it! And my mom is going to hand-make the flower girl dress! Isn't that awesome?

Altogether they are our wedding posse, and they rock!