Favors

In addition to the sandalwood fans we will have available for each guest I plan on making buckeyes and putting 2 for each guest in mint green favor boxes I bought at Michael's. My aunt makes amazing buckeyes and plans on helping me make between 300-400, depending on how many people RSVP to the wedding.

These are the favor boxes, except mine are green.
This is the best picture of buckeyes I can get. When my aunt makes them she covers them completely with chocolate so they actually resemble a buckeye a bit less, but they look prettier than these. Making these should provide for a fun-filled day of swearing and third degree burns. I thoroughly look forward to this day.

Some signs for the reception

With the inspiration from Tdiddy's bio I made these signs. I plan on filling a couple of galvanized buckets with the sandalwood fans I purchased and putting the signs, 'beat the heat' and putting them in a few different locations outside, provided it doesn't rain.
I made these signs to put next to the small baskets I plan on putting my photo sharing cards in.

Also, I made these signs to add to the baskets where I plan to put the after party directions.

I quit my job.

For any of you who have been following my ever-growing hatred for my current job I am proud to announce I am finally leaving the evil empire. After three and a half years of employment and two and a half years of hatred I am finally leaving this place.

When I announced my resignation people were genuinely shocked. I think the shock wasn't from the fact that I was leaving, but over the fact that someone actually had the balls to leave the company. No one leaves this company. NO ONE. Every time I told someone outside the company that I was leaving I got the same response, "...but you work for XXXXX company, no one leaves." Yup, I know. Let me just give you an example. Out of the 25 or so finance people that I work closely with I am one of 2 people under the age of 45. And out of those 20 people, 18 of them have been here for 20+ years. 20+ years at the same company. Granted, they have had several different jobs, but still, it's pretty insane. All the people here are all about job security and do not care about the opportunities that are out there. Oh well, their loss I guess.

New veil

A few weeks ago I decided that I look absolutely ridiculous in a birdcage veil. Well, maybe not ridiculous, but I think my veil doesn't fit the way it was supposed to so it looks a bit ridiculous. I however, love the barrette that went along with the birdcage veil, and since it's detachable I will probably put that somewhere on my head.

A few months ago JennyGrl from the Boston board got married and posted some of her pictures. I fell in love with her veil, and low and behold, she wanted to sell it. Yesterday I finally went and got the thing from her. It's an Erica Koesler bubble veil. It's definitely not something I would see myself in, but it's beautiful and I love it. Now I just have to figure out a hair style that would look good with it. Originally I was going to wear a low loose ponytail to one side and curl it all up and have side-swept bangs to the other side, but I feel like with this kind of veil and you need to wear your hair up and in the back otherwise it looks weird. Any suggestions for hair styles are welcomed.

Make-up trial

I had my make-up trial with Sam from Girly Junk. Although she is a little hard to get a hold of and hard to lock in a time for a trial she is awesome. Judging from how many times she has had to switch my trial around to accommodate brides and their changing needs I am certain that on the day of my wedding she will go to great lengths to make sure everything is perfect.

I told her I liked the smokey eye look. I don't wear anything on my lips typically, so I told her to keep it simple. I also have really weird eye lids that fold up a bit, so any time I put any eye make up on I end up with creases and my eye make-up looks like crap. She put fake lashes on me to see how I liked them, even though she said they were completely unnecessary since I have naturally long eyelashes anyway.

Overall I liked the look a lot. I am going to nix the fake eyelashes and lighten up the eyes. The make-up lasted all night and didn't crease at all so I was very satisfied. Sam was SUPER quick--I think the trial was about 35 minutes tops. Here are the pics. Let me know what you think. *DISCLAIMER* I had braces put on a few months back and I think they look absolutely horrible. Also, because of the braces they needed to pull one of my front teeth (the 3rd one over from the front) so when I smile you can see the missing tooth a bit. I've sworn off smiling until the wedding when the braces are off and I am not missing a tooth.

After-party

I went to a wedding recently on a golf course in the middle of no where. We knew going to the wedding that there would be an after party. One of the groomsmen owns a mansion right on the golf course and he offered his house up to prolong the festivities. SWEET! Except that at the end of the wedding the DJ announced there would be an after party and neglected to tell us the address. We finally got a hold of the bride who gave us the address, but for some reason my GPS wasn't picking it up. We drove around like fools for about a half hour looking for said house and finally drove home when we couldn't find it.

After this incident I swore I would make direction cards to the after party after our wedding. Our after-party is about 15-20 minutes away from the reception location, leaving much room for getting lost. Originally I was going to add the directions to the directions insert in our invitations, but I figured people would just leave them at home which would be pretty counterproductive to my original plan. I am planning on making a little basket or something and putting them at various locations around the reception so people can pick them up if they plan to come. Here they are.

I like this..

My Garter

Though I am not the biggest fan of the garter toss and even though we haven't decided if we're doing it or not, I went ahead and bought a garter on ebay from http://stores.ebay.com/Avys-Bridal-Boutique. I think it's pretty sweet. It was free shipping and only cost $11.99.

I LOVE YOU, mail merge tool

Because I am anal about these invitations and I have convinced myself I am not going to have anyone RSVP with an extra uninvited yest guest I have decided to make individual RSVPs. Each couple will have an RSVP with their actual names on it. There's going to be no fill-in-the-blanks with your flavor of the week or adding your 2 year old brat child to the guest list. None of that. The names on the RSVP are the names of the people that are invited to the wedding. NO ONE ELSE.

After making that decision a long time ago, I knew tackling them would be another story. In my own mind I thought it was going to be the easiest thing ever. Make a template of what I wanted it to look like and then throw each guests name in. Print them out one by one and, tada, I would be done. Yea...not so much.

I didn't want to use 120 different pieces of paper when I could get by on 40 or so. Killing innocent trees just to finish these invitations would be wrong. I put a post up on P&E on The Knot and a wonderful woman "Terribridelee" gave me step by step instructions on how to mail merge. This saved me hours of work and about 50 pieces of cardstock. Thanks, Terri, you ROCK!

Once I have more time on my hands I will post step by step instructions with screen shots so everyone will know how to do it.

Another invitations post...

So, over the weekend I had a bit of free time, which never typically happens. I managed to finish all my taping and stuffing. I still have to figure out a way to make my RSVPs without using another 100 pieces of paper or so. I am making individual RSVPs with each guests' name instead of a generic 'fill-in-the-blank' type of RSVP.

I cannot figure out for the life of me how to tackle my RSVPs. I am using publisher for everything else so I kinda want to stick with MS Publisher. I want to be able to print 4-6 RSVPs per sheet of paper. It would be easy if I was printing the exact same thing, then I could just switch the # of copies per sheet, but I want to be able to change the guest's name in each one.

Basically I am trying to figure out how to duplicate the RSVP 6 times on the piece of paper and be able to go in, change the guest's name on the RSVP, add the crop and bleed marks and print them out. I CANNOT FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO IT!! I will welcome any help.

Birdcage Veil--Finally done

Bharnett on the Boston Knot board recommended an etsy.com seller (qgdesigns) who made custom veils. I wanted a birdcage, but didn't really like the whole flower or feather deal. I wanted something very simple and not over the top. She had a crystal hair comb that I really liked and I asked her if you could possibly make a birdcage veil with the hair comb and the netting I liked. I've waited over a month for this piece and I am so happy with it. You can detach the netting from the comb, which is great seeing as I am am definitely not going to want to wear the netting all day.

Accomodations=Accommodations HUGE MISTAKE #1

If you look at my inserts below you will notice I spelled 'accommodations' incorrectly. Pretty sweet that I realized this when I was standing in line at Staples right before I was about to get all 65 pages of inserts professionally cut. What is NOT SWEET is that I wasted 65 pieces of linen paper and pretty much half an ink cartridge printing out misspelled inserts. If you read one of my below posts you would know that when printing my inserts I put my printer on 'maximum DPI' print setting which prints at a very high resolution, except that it takes about 5 minutes per sheet of paper. 65 x 5 mins=5.5 hours or so WASTED on printing something that I ended up in the recycle bin.

My fiance will not let me live this one down. He knows I am a spelling Nazi, so he thought it was funny that myself nor spell check picked up on this HUGE mistake.

How did spell check not pick this up, you ask? Well, I used 2 text boxes when making the insert. 1 text box I made like 2 weeks ago and then I went back and did text box #2 yesterday. 1 text box that said 'accommodations' and another text box with the actual pertinent information about the accommodations. Before I printed I ran spell check, but I forgot that I actually had 2 text boxes and I only ran spell check on the first on. Hence, the reason why spell check never picked it up.

In hindsight it could have been way, way, way worse. I could have had them all cut at Staples which would have been a waste of about $10, taped them onto my cover stock and wasted about 60 pages of cover stock ($16 or so). Or even worse---MAILED THEM OUT!!!!!!!!!!!! All-in-all, not a very bad mistake. Crisis averted.

Inserts

I finally finished the directions and accommodations inserts. This is what they look like. I am printing them out myself, having the cut at Staples, and then attaching them to leaf green card stock from Paper Source as a backing.

New phone..NICE

Seeing as my friends are pretty anti-social and prefer texting over just picking up the damn phone and calling me, I have been persuaded to get a phone with a keyboard to make texting these said friends much easier. Why, you ask? Well, because texting on small phones when you have long fingernails is pretty much impossible and T9 blows ass. When you try to type 'beer' into my cell phone it comes up as 'adds.' I don't know about you, but I text the word 'beer' a helluva lot more than I text 'adds.'

Paul and I got matching cell phones and finally got our asses onto a family plan. Yes, I know the matching cell phone thing is lame as hell, but we got an awesome deal so it was hard to pass up. Today when I return home from work I should have 2 nice shiny new Samsung Glydes sitting on my doorstep.

Now, the next time I text 'adds' instead of 'beer' it's probably because I've had too much beer and can't spell correctly.

Update on the tape

So after a while or searching today I came across a seller on Amazon selling 6 roll packs for $1.01. Yes, that's right, like .15 cents a piece. That's AWESOME! I ordered 30 rolls just to be safe. I think it came up to $15 or so with shipping. I don't think I'll be bitching about tape ever again.

Double sided tape

Yes, you might think it's ridiculous that I am posting about double sided tape, but I thought it was necessary. I have 120 invitations to make. And no, I cannot use glue-dots for this, otherwise I would. Thanks to everyone who insisted I used glue dots, but they look like shit.

Thing I need to tape:

• 120 5.5 x 5.5 invitation mats (green card stock) to metallic pocketfold
• 120 5.25 x 5.25 invitations to invitation mat
• directions insert (text weight ivory linen paper) to card stock backing
• accommodations insert (text weight ivory linen paper) to card stock backing
• RSVP (text weight ivory linen paper) to card stock backing

So far I have taped all 120 invitations mats to the pocketfolds and taped about 70 directions inserts to the card stock backing and I've used 8 friggen rolls of tape. I will, at minimum, need another 15-20 rolls of tape to finish. So far I've bought all the tape at the dollar store close to my house, but now they're sold out and will not reorder it for me. I've gone to 4 other dollar stores and nothing.

Every single other place I have looked it costs like $3.50 a roll. I refuse to pay that much for effin TAPE, especially since I need like 15-20 more rolls. I don't care what brand of tape it is. I just need double sided tape for less than $2.50 a roll. I think I am going to go to Target today and see if they have some.

It's starting to get annoying. I think I've spent more money on gas trying to look for cheap tape than I would have if I just sucked it up and paid the extra money to buy the damn expensive tape. Oh well.

Suits.

We are getting our suits through Jim's formal wear. They are Alfresco. We did this a decently long time ago, pre blog, so I never mentioned anything about it. Paul wanted formal tuxes, but I refused. We have an 11 am ceremony and with our luck it will either be raining or hot as balls. I am sure the guys won't appreciate wearing black suits. I convinced Paul that he would like these. I LOOOOVE them. I told him if he wants he can wear man-dles too. I doubt he'll go for it.

Centerpieces

Now that the wedding is a bit closer I actually have to start thinking about details: specifically, flowers. Originally when I went to the florist I had cylinder vases in mind with submerged cybidium orchids. She quoted me $80 per centerpiece. We need something like 15-20 of them which comes out to wayyyy more than I want to spend on centerpieces.

I got a hold of the florist yesterday and she said she would but the price down to $50 a piece if I provided her with the vases I wanted. Now I am on the hunt for cylinder vases. I think I am going to settle with finding various heights and doing different centerpieces on each table. I want the vases on the taller side, so around 20"+. If anyone is selling vases please let me know.


Some of the pics I like:

Printing the invites and taping the invitation mats

Yesterday was a shitty Sunday with a whole bunch of rain. Luckily, neither Paul or myself had to work so we spent the day inside doing wedding related thing. Last week I designed my invites and ordered some new ink to start printing them. I have a pretty good printer (HP photosmart 7660) so I was pretty confident that the prints would come out good. The ink I ordered last week finally came in the mail after being mis-delivered after I put the wrong zip code when inputting my address. Oh well.

Anyway, I wanted the invites to come out good so I set my printer on the best quality print. I printed 130 copies on Neenah ivory linen text-weight paper. When I set the print on best quality my PC said that the printing would take longer than normal, so I timed it. Each print=5 minutes. 5 minutes X 130 copies=650 minutes=10.8 hours. I started printing at around 2 pm yesterday afternoon and when I went to bed at 11 it was STILL PRINTING. I woke up and everything was all done. Tonight, I get to print 130 directions inserts. Awesome.

Paul was a nice fiance and helped tape the invitation mats to the pocketfolds. It didn't take nearly as much time as I thought it would. Tonight I plan on bringing the printed invitations to Kinko's and have them cut to 5x5 squares to save me a bunch of time. I will post pics once they're finished.

BRACES. At 25? Fuck me!

I have perfectly straight teeth. So I guess I would consider myself lucky for never having to make a visit to the orthodontist and pay >$7000 in order to get these so-called perfectly-straight-teeth.

A few months ago I went to my normal dentist and he informed me I had an impacted canine. I won't go into detail about this b/c unless you've had this it's too confusing to explain correctly. Anyway, I knew about this impacted canine my whole life, but didn't exactly think it would become a problem until way later in life. Neither did my dentist.

He referred me to an oral surgeon and an orthodontist to get this issue taken care of. I'll skip most of the details and go straight to the orthodontist part. He had this awesome incredible plan which involved putting this metal contraption into my mouth (kinda like a retainer you can't take out) and connecting a little chain to the impacted tooth up in my gums, and gradually pulling the impacted tooth down into it's place in my mouth. He put a fake tooth in the spot where the baby tooth was so I didn't look like I was missing a tooth. GOOD PLAN! He also informed me that once the tooth was pulled down enough he would have to put braces on me. No big deal, this wasn't supposed to happen for a long time. (i.e. until AFTER the wedding)

Fast forward to yesterday when I went for my every 3 week tightening and x-ray visit. The ortho ripped the metal contraption thing out of my mouth without telling me what he was doing. Mind you, this thing was cemented to my teeth. Came out just fine with just a little bit of pain. He took an x-ray and informed me that the metal contraption has done all it needs to do so it's already time for the next step. BRACES.

BRACES at 25 years old. Yes, I understand that there are a bunch of older people with braces. I never thought I would be one of them, especially when I hit the jackpot as far as relatively perfect teeth go.

And never in a million years did I think my mouth was going to hurt as bad as it does this morning. It hurt to eat toast. Effin TOAST! I want to down a bottle of prescription pain killers and vodka and take a nap.

Fuck me.

Invitations!!!

This morning I finally conquered the actual invitations. Now I need to buy some ink to print the damn things because I refuse to go to Kinkos and pay $.59 per color copy. I like them a lot. I thought they would be a lot harder than they were, but thanks to someone from The Knot creating a nice little site including step-by-step instructions it was pretty easy. This is the site: http://superfabulousdiypocketfolds.googlepages.com/

You need Microsoft Publisher. I used 2003 and the instructions helped out a lot.

LIME GREEN SHOES!!!!!!!

Shoes were kind of a big deal for me. First off, Paul is only about 1/8 inch taller than me and I refuse to stand taller than him on our wedding day. I have a slight complex when it comes to being tall. Second, we're getting married in a garden and I couldn't wear incredibly spikey heels because they'd surely sink in the grass. I absolutely hate ballet flats so that option was OUT. I wanted something different and plain white wasn't for me.

So, I did it. I dyed my shoes lime green! I have been eyeing the Camelias by Pink Paradox London. I finally broke down and sat in traffic for a fricken' hour to go to the place in Natick to buy them. I told the guy I wanted to dye them some funky color and he asked me if I wanted to them red. I said I was thinking more like lime green. He told me he loved me and that I would be the first bride to dye my shoes lime green. He said I better email him a picture of them on my wedding day so he could put his first lime green shoes on the store's website.
Here they are in all their glory. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them!

Before, all plain and white:
After: Pure deliciousness

Envelopes

On Monday I finally ordered envelopes for my invitations and my RSVP cards. Again, I went to http://www.envelopperinc.com/ to buy them. For what I was looking for they were the cheapest on the internet.

Last night I got home from job #2 at around midnight and was surprised to find a box sitting at the bottom of my steps. Sweet, my envelopes are there! I ordered them on Monday night with free shipping and they took a total of like 40 hours to get to my house. Once again, envelopper, you ROCK! Even though it was midnight I absolutely HAD to open them up and see exactly what the color looked like in person.

I ran up into my room and ripped open the box like a freakin' 4 year old on X-mas morning. (For the record, I know how ridiculously lame I am). I love the colors of the envelopes. FYI, the colors are very different than the color they show on their website. Paul was pissed. I woke up him AND the dog opening up my envelopes at midnight.

I bought leaf green cover stock from Paper Source a few months ago and was planning on using it for my invitations mats and the backing for my inserts. I was sorta paranoid that since I bought the envelopes and cover stock at 2 different places the colors would clash and look like shit. Much to my surprise, the leaf green from Paper Source and the tropical green from envelopper are almost the exact same color. SWEET!

150 tropical green 6x6 envelopes (30 extra for all the mistakes I will surely make)

150 4 Bar (3 5/8 x 5 1/8) Envelopes in citrus green for the RSVPs.

Yes, I realize they are 2 different colors, but they look incredibly awesome together. Word.

Finally made an appointment w/ the JP

Have you seen that bud light commercial where the officiant marries the bride and groom like he is auctioning off a prize horse so they have more time to drink bud light? No? Well, you should. It's hysterical. That's the kind of ceremony I am looking for. "I do" "I do" okay, let's party!! I wonder if my JP has something like that.


All joking aside, I do want an incredibly short ceremony--probably 15 minutes or so. I don't plan on doing a unity candle or a sand blending ceremony or anything like that. I just want to say my vows, Paul to say his, and the actual ceremony part to be over with.

Paul is a non-practicing Catholic and I am a non-believer in anything God related so Paul has agreed to not have anything even mentioning God in our ceremony. I am very happy he agreed to this. Paul, you rock!


So Monday we're meeting with your JP at his home in Weymouth, Ma. His name is Tom Welch http://www.welchweddings.com/ and he comes highly recommended by fellow knotties on the Boston board.
I just think he looks a lot like Kenny Rogers. Everyone say hello to Tom:

Things I need to do

A couple of weeks ago a post went up on the knot about all the random stuff people either did or still needed to do. From that post I pretty much scanned through the entire thing and pulled out all the random wedding related stuff that pertained to me and wrote it all down. There's a whole bunch of shit on it. This is what I have left:

• find a cleaner for my dress
• get alterations (I already have an appointment for January)
• pay dj (he is a friend so we aren't doing a contract)
• pick out music for ceremony
• design the actual invites, RSVP cards, and inserts for our pocketfolds
• get the few last addresses for invitations
• address the save the dates
• book hair stylist (pretty sure I am using my friend Jill, so it's not a big deal right now)
• book make-up artist (I have one reserved, I am just waiting for my trial run)
• figure out what I am doing for a guest book
• DIY a card box
• book a place for the rehearsal dinner
• buy truffle boxes for the buckeyes I am making as favors
• make the actual buckeyes and freeze them
• buy my shoes
• meet with JP
• buy toasting glasses
• order bridesmaid dresses ( I am letting my girls pick whatever ones they want)
• buy bridesmaid shoes (again, I told them white or silver, doesn't matter to me)
• buy BM/GM gifts
• find/buy/make jewelery for me
• buy garter
• get on my mother's ass about buying a mother of the bride dress
• get Paul to get on his mother's ass about a mother of the groom dress
• pay $1500 for the house rental
• pay $2000 to our florist
• pay$900 to our photographer
• finish paying for venue
• decorations for guest book table
• make table numbers
• make escort cards
• make place cards
• rehearsal dinner invitations
• vaccinations for honeymoon (we're going to Bali)

Pretty excited that's all I have left to do in the next 9 months!

Wedding band(s)

We are tight with the guys that own Hannoush jewelers which is pretty sweet. Paul bought my E-ring for about half of what it retailed for in the store. The appraisal is also about 3k more than he paid for it so if I accidentally lose, ahem, decide to make earrings out of the diamonds, I will make money off the ring. I am obviously just kidding.


My engagement is custom made which basically means to find a wedding band that fits around the diamond and has the exact same setting it needs to be custom made too. I originally bought a band which looked nice around the ring but it didn't exactly 'hug' my engagement ring the way I wanted it to.

Since Paul is the greatest guy ever, on the tax free holiday a few weeks ago he paid a visit back to the jewelers and had a band made that was my exact setting. I decided that it would be best if I got 2 bands to fit around both sides. I know, 2 bands, I am really not spoiled at all. The jeweler happily exchanged my old band that I bought for the 2 new custom-made bands. I am in love.


We finally got both of them back fro the jeweler last week and they look awesome. Here's a pic. It's kind of blurry. For some reason my camera sucks at taking close-up pictures. You get the point.

Okay, so I guess I'll put my Boudoir teasers up

Here are the teasers. Rachel did a great job. They are kind of small, but you get the point. If you post these pics anywhere else, please give Rachel at Mergeweddings.com proper credit and please do not remove the water mark on the pictures.

Boudoir Pics

For those of you that have no idea what Boudoir pictures are, look on google, because I am not going to post mine in this blog. What if I wanted to run for president some day? I don't want them getting out

Anyway, I thought getting them done would be a grea gift for Paul. Originally I thought that I would give them to him in an album right before we walked down the aisle, but last night I received a couple of teasers from the photographer and I don't think I can hide them for 9months.

Rachel from Merge weddings did the pics and so far, I couldn't be happier with them. I can't wait till Monday when I get the full album.

The invites

After much convincing from lurking other people's bios on the knot I decided that I would make my own invitations. I was dead set on making pocketfolds because they are just so pretty! :o) I am no where close to being complete, but here is what I have so far.

I bought metallic bronze 5 3/4 X 5 3/4 pocketfolds from envelopperinc.com. Contrary to what people say on the knot, cardsandpockets.com is NOT the cheapest place to get pocketfolds. I paid 1.29 a piece for these. The monogram tags consist of the kaleidoscope gold pattern metallic cardstock from envelopments.com. This paper was a bit more expensive than I wanted, but it's beautiful. I think it was 1.25 a sheet and then $12 to ship or so. I have about 15 pieces left if anyone wants to buy it from me.

I printed the actual monogram on ivory linen text weight paper and used double sided tape to stick it on the metallic card stock. I used Zots to stick the tags on to the ribbon and more Zots to secure the ribbon belly band around the actual invite.

I still haven't started any of the inserts.

If you have any questions feel free to page me on the Boston, June 09, or Planning and Etiquette board.

After the party is the after party....

Our wedding ends at 4:30pm. What a lame-ass time to end a wedding, huh?. Normally weddings get over between 11-12 and people stumble back to the hotel, have a few more drinks at a hotel room after party and call it a night. Unfortunately, since our wedding gets over at 4:30 going back to the hotel when it's broad day light doesn't seem like so much fun to me.

After months and months of trying to figure out how to handle this, we've decided that we'd rent a huge beach house and have everyone come over after the wedding. Kegs, BBQ, and comfortable sleeping for about 30 guest will be provided. After that, you're free to crash on whatever open surface remains.

We rented the house from Thursday-Sunday so pretty much anyone who wants to stay there for the weekend can. Hopefully most of the wedding party will be there.

Bridesmaid dresses

Since I decided I am not going to be an asshole and make all my bridesmaids look like the Olsen twins circa 1988, I've decided to let them choose their own dress. I've picked out the color honeydew from David's Bridal and they can pick whatever dress they want as long as it's that color and tea length. On of my bridesmaids asked if she could get a long dress and just have it altered to tea length. Sounds good to me. I am hoping to get 5 completely different dresses. These are the ones I like:

Save the Dates and Photosharing cards

I made these with the help of Vista print.com It's a pretty fantastic site. Once you sign up, wait a few days and then you start getting bombarded with free offers that make you feel like the luckiest person alive. I don't think a morning has passed where I don't receive an email from these guys telling me that everything is free. Really, all you pay is for shipping. I got 100 post card-sized save the dates and 250 business cards and it only cost me $10 of so for shipping.

We finally booked our honeymoon

The honeymoon has probably been the hardest part of the planning process yet. I refuse to go anywhere I've been before, so that sorta rules out a lot of places people typically go for honeymoons--I've lived in Spain and while I was there I pretty much traveled to all of the major European countries so that was out. I've been to Morocco and Gibraltar. My best friend was born and raised in St. Thomas and her parents still live on the island so St. Thomas and all of the surrounding islands were automatically out of the question since I've been there between 8-10 times in the past 6 years (St. Thomas, St. John, Jost Van Dyke, Tortola, St. Croix, Puerto Rico, etc.). I've been to the Atlantis on Paradise Island and really, unless you're hammered for 5 days straight, it's really nothing to brag about.

Initially, Paul was dead set on staying at an all-inclusive resort. After researching all-inclusives I came to realize that most of them were centralized in the Caribbean, the Bahamas, and Mexico. I won't even list all the reasons why I never want to go to Mexico. We'll just leave it at that.

We looked into Fiji a bit and apparently June is their winter, so beach conditions aren't ideal. If we were putting off our honeymoon till winter Fiji is where we would be going. No questions asked.

And then I discovered Bali. The second I saw this place I knew it was where we were going. The hard part was trying to convince Paul that Bali was where he wanted to go too. I had my heart set on it for a good 2 months and after another 2 months of convincing, Paul decided it was where he wanted to go too. Mind you, in my attempts to convince, I left some of the major points out of the argument (i.e. 40 hours of travel time, including a 15 hour plane ride from NYC to Seoul followed by a 12 hour layover, insane mosquitoes, and the need for a Typhoid Fever immunization shot.)

Either way, we are staying at http://www.thevillas.net/ and I couldn't be happier. We have our own private villa accompanied by our own private pool and butler and concierge service for 10 nights.

We are getting married on a Saturday and not leaving till Monday night. Our flight consists of 3 legs: Boston to NYC which is only about 45 minutes. A 2 hour layover in NYC followed by a 15 hour plane ride to Seoul, Korea. Then a 12 hour layover in Seoul, which there was absolutely no way of avoiding. After our 12 hour layover we get to jump on another plane for 7 hours from Seoul to the wonderful island of Bali!

These are some pics of the hotel:

My wedding dress

Because I felt I absolutely had to post a pic of my wedding dress, here it is. It's an Angelina Faccenda line from the Mori Lee collection. Regular price $2500, paid $250. I bought it at the running of the brides back in February 08. I have to get a bunch of alterations done and some cleaning. Overall, not a bad buy. If I gain more than 5 lbs. I am screwed.
Front of the dress:

About me, if you already don't know me

Paul and I got engaged way back in December 2006. We finally decided we would get married June 20, 2009. At the time 2009 seemed pretty far away. Now, it's only 9 months away. Apprently, my sick obsession with Southpark has gotten in the way of my planning.

This is my dog Yaz. Overall, he's a pretty bad-ass animal. Yaz is an English Bulldog. The way his body is formed makes it impossible for him to lick his own balls. I find it amazing that my life revolves around something that is incapable of preparing his own meals. It's annoying, especially since I hate to cook for myself.