Inviting the VIPs

With 197 days and counting, it's finally time to send out our very first invitations! I know, I know, you must be thinking, this girl is crazy! It's much too early for such talk! But that is where you are wrong, dear reader. For those of you interested in inviting the US President, or perhaps Mickey and Minnie Mouse, I have heard time and time again that the invites must be sent 6 whole months in advance!

Now of course, it's far too early to be revealing the final invitation to you, after all, none of the guests have seen them yet! What I can show you is something I'm quite excited about - my homemade calligraphy and envelope liners!



Aren't they so yummy?

In case you are wanting to invite some Very Important People to your wedding, here are some helpful addresses:

The Honorable and Mrs. Barack Obama
The White House, Greetings Office, Room 39
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, District of Columbia
20502

The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo
Governor of New York State
NYS State Capitol Building
Albany, New York
12224

Mickey and Minnie Mouse
The Magic Kingdom
1675 North Buena Vista Drive
Lake Buena Vista, Florida
32830

Are you inviting any special guests?

An Etsy Endeavor

After many trials and errors, I have finally created the perfect "vintage" postcards for our escort cards and table names! I put together a few, and proudly showed FH, who instantly told me I should sell them. Not long after that comment (and by not long, I mean like, 5 seconds) I remembered etsy!

One hour later, I am the proud owner of my very own Etsy store!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/Taters759?ref=pr_shop_more

Here are the gorgeous handmade vintage postcards:






We are using these in particular for our escort cards and table names, but I will definitely be making more later on for cute new address postcards!

Menus are also up for sale! Right now I just have the one design, as it took a long time to create it exactly how I wanted it, but I hope to create a few more customizable templates in the coming weeks.





As I continue with the do-it-yourself wedding projects, more and more will be added to the store. Happy shopping!

Let the Countdown Begin!

This is it. The real countdown has begun. When we started this journey, we had almost 500 days to go, and now we have less than 200. We have finally hit true wedding planning season! Contracts are beginning to be signed, detail meetings are being planned, DIY projects are being put together, and all the important clothes and jewels for the big day are being bought!

Buying the Bling!

Ok, I know I haven't been around much this month, but I promise it's for a good reason! FH and I have been busy researching and shopping around for our wedding bands! And guess what?? Yesterday we took the plunge and actually purchased them! In 6-8 weeks our sparkling beauties will come to live in their new home, until 201 days from now when we can finally put them on!

It all started while I was watching TV one day, and saw an ad. Glenn Peter (a local family-owned jeweler) has an amazing buy one, get one free sale every March on wedding bands! Now, I know it was a little early for us to buy them, after all, it wasn't even on my to-do list for another two months and I'm an overly organized, do things far in advance type girl! But, how could we pass this up?

And so one Saturday three weeks ago we headed out to the mall. Our first stop was to Hannoush, where FH bought my engagement ring. This whole year we had thought we would buy our wedding bands from them, since they treated FH so well last May. And we loved our experience there. The salesman was very knowledgeable and could tell us anything we could possibly want to know.

Our next stop was Glenn Peter. We wanted to compare not only prices, but also experience and guarantees concerning care after purchase. While the rings were comparable in quality, I didn't particularly care for our experience. The woman who helped us seemed to know little to nothing about the rings or any store policies, and was quite insistant that I order a size 6.5 for a ring that I can never have resized, when I know my ring size is 6. Honestly, the only reason we went back to that store was because of the sale. And boy am I glad we did!

The following week was full of questions. What happens if I need the ring resized? What happens if a diamond falls out?

We returned to Glenn Peter the next weekend, and spoke to another salesman, who was much more helpful! He had remembered us from the previous weekend, and could answer all our questions. And so, we thought it over the following week, and yesterday came back one final time to purchase them! In the end, we saved almost just about $1500 and FH ended up with a much better ring than he would have bought.

And, as it turns out, I am not a ring size 6. I'm actually a 5.75! Boy am I glad we didn't go for the 6.5!

I cannot WAIT to see them in person!!

February Gym Update

Ok, as promised, here it is. February has come and gone, and we've gotten a bit more serious about going to the gym. Well, I've at least been trying to work out. We've at least got the diet part down. This month we'll do the gym thing more. On the plus side, I have lost 7lbs this month!

I don't know if you can see in the picture or not, but I organized my "x"s so one color is for days I do lots of housework (like when I leave five loads of laundry for one day), one color is for working out at home (wii fit or DVDs) and the other color is for actually going to the gym. There's only one of those colors on this month. Yeah.

But as I said, it's a start, and we are definitely going to gym it up this month! With only slightly over 7 months until the big day, that means there's only 5 months to go until my brother's Hawaiian wedding, and we'd like to be in shape for that!