Planes, Trains and Automobiles...

Transportation can be a nightmare.  In fact, if I ran into a genie today, I know one of my wishes would be to have the ability to get home with only the snap of a finger.  'I want to go home' *snap* 'Yay, I'm home!'  - doesn't it sound divine?  Now I've toyed with the idea of having the *snap* get me anywhere I want, but sometimes its the journey that makes it all worthwhile and I don't want to lose out on that for always.  Getting home however...I feel like you're always tiiiiired by the time you're headed home, the anticipation of the trip or the event has worn off and the 'all' that you gave the experience from which you are departing has left you will little to propel you to the comfort of PJs and a bed.

These sentiments regarding the hassle that is 'getting home' are exacerbated at a wedding, by the addition of alcohol.  That's right.  I'm laying it on the line, shooting you straight, letting the cat out of the bag....telling you the truth.  The combination of merriment felt from guests watching two people they love join in the most sacred of ceremonies with a complimentary bar often leads to an excess of participation in the libations.  As I said, people often drink at weddings.

Luckily (I think at least) our generation grew up in a DO NOT DRINK & DRIVE world.  We saw the posters, we watched the videos in drivers ed and we even repeat the catchy one liners: Friends don't let friends drive drunk or stay alive, don't drink and drive.  We get it, we know.  And often we're choosing where we live so that public transportation is an option after HH.  Or we organize rides to trade off being DD.  We're throwing parties at house/apts and letting friends crash on the floor to avoid it.  We are being responsible (everyone give yourself a little pat on the back!)

For all the reasons listed above, we knew that transportation for our guests to and from our wedding was going to be high on our priority list.  Ash Lawn is one of the closer venues we looked at (as far as distance from downtown Cville), but we didn't want folks who planned to enjoy a few cocktails at our wedding to have to worry about that windy road back into town come 10pm. 

Soooooo....we've booked some fabulous motor coaches to ship our guests from our hotel blocks to Ash Lawn and then back after the party is over (lets be real, the party will never be over...but it will at some point stop being at Ash Lawn).  Javs and I have 5 different hotels where we have blocked rooms (go wahoos! beat those terps!) so we haven't figured out exactly how all the stops and comings and goings will work, but we've booked a vendor: Ambassador Limousine (which always feels like an accomplishment) and are confident that our UVA degrees will ensure we can work it out. 

Having now been to a few friends weddings where transportation was provided, I can tell you how grateful I was to have one less thing to worry about when planning my trip/attendance (yes, I used to think that merely attending a wedding took planning and coordination). It'll also make this bride less worried about everyone getting home okay from our wedding, knowing that we provided a ride for a bunch of people (come on, you guys know I'm always the one that's like 'text me when you get home!').  So friends, save your worries for October 13th for the rain - your ride is covered!  Don't make a fuss, hop on the bus!  No?... Want to avoid roaches? Ride on the coaches!  Still not?... how about: Lets all get excited, your ride is provided!  Come on, I thought that one was good....Use your head! Take the motor coach instead...

I think I missed my calling...

Save the Date! (Part III)

With Save the Dates 1) designed 2) printed and 3)envelopes in hand, you'd think the hardest part was behind us.  You'd think. 

**Advice Alert** Start sending Christmas/Holiday cards.

If you aren't married yet, but you think that you may get married some day, start sending holiday cards.  (If you're already married, you may send holiday cards too!)  First off, its so fun getting Christmas cards that it'd be nice to spread the love.  Second, people are so excited to get your card that the excitement actually travels around the world (or across state lines) to fill you with the excitement of that card so you get to enjoy it too! (no joke!) Third (and the most relevant for this post) it means you'll start collecting and keeping up with your friends' addresses so that when you need to send them something really important like an edible arrangement, Halloween card or Save the Date! you totally already have their address!

Despite the fact that Javs and I do send cards during the festive season, we still struggled  to get all the names and addresses needed for the Save the Dates (cause people move *cough* the Bottoms *cough* and cousins go off to college and some of your friends who are dating live together and some of them don't and some you only know one address for and therefore need to find the other.....)  Just trust me, its a lot.  So start now!  Send cards!

This was also the first time we had to re-address those lists that we made waaaay back in October.  There was a Staples family list, a Cabezas family list and an Aud & Javs list and we needed to decide who exactly would be receiving these fabulous Save the Dates off of those lists.....but I'm saving 'the guest list' for another post.....



I'm not sure if you can see it, but they all
have a scripted 'Love' included on them.

Lets get back to the fun stuff :)  Yes another trendy idea on the wedding scene today is to use your stamps to make a statement.  Brides are tracking down vintage stamps, or getting  $.05 or $.20 stamps so they can use a bunch of them to kind of decorate their envelopes.  They do look really cool, but as I've said, I was officially in head down, rush mode.  So Javs and I browsed the current stamps available at the good ole post office so that I could run grab what we needed at lunch.  The USPS does have some 'wedding' stamps that are (I think) always available, but they tend to be more traditional and didn't really fit our feel.  we wanted something fun!  something happy :)  Something that screamed love! and joy! (wow, a lot of pressure for a stamp)  We settled on these bad boys.  They were romantic, but whimsical and felt more consistent with what our guests would see when they opened up their envelope.  (we did not use the dove stamps....yes I bought extra sheets so that we didn't have to use the dove ones because I thought they were too traditional and not colorful....brides are crazy, what can I say.)

Now to get all those complete and accurate addresses onto the envelopes that were prepared with these delightful, colorful stamps....we considered doing labels, but Mrs. Cabezas had kindly offered to address them.  Javier and I knew that she had beautiful, script-like handwriting, but were worried about the time it would take to have her address 100+ envelopes.  While we're making some more modern or less traditionally decisions regarding the wedding elsewhere, I'll totally admit that I'm a sucker for a beautifully, hand addressed envelope.  Maybe even more today, in our world of emails and texts and facebook messages, its truly beautiful to hold in hand, that time and effort. Labels would have been absolutely fine!  It just felt the right amount of special for the wedding to have them addressed by hand!  Needless to say, we took her up on her offer!  She continued to tell us it wasn't bad, but I can only imagine the hand cramps after writing so many!  (not to mention, she wrote the return address on all the backs of the envelopes too!)  I thought they turned out so beautiful and we are eternally grateful for all of her hard work!

Woohoo!  Lets get these out the door!  Dedicated MOH, Kelsey Bottoms, came over for an early morning stuffing session (and was even together enough to document the event).  We had a pretty good system going, Kels stuffed and sealed, I read every line of the address to Javs, he cross referenced our master list to ensure names and addresses were correct.  We did not put a 'Yes' in that Save the Date column until everything had been confirmed.  (I'll tell you now - there will be some mistakes - just be ready for it.  We caught a lot of them during this session...wrong zip code or misspelled name...but you're probably still going to get some returned to you, not a big deal!  We had 4 returned - but one was Ando's that we were attempting to send to Australia without writing 'Australia' on it, so it totally doesn't count)

This is our postwoman!

We were planning a trip down to the post office (especially b/c I had heard through my blogs that the post office prefers you to sort and bundle your envelopes when you're sending such a bulk out), but as we were discussing our plans, heard the clear *clink* of our own mail box opening and closing!  Javs rushed out to ask our postman (actually postwoman, we learned!) the best way to handle our outgoing mail.  She was super nice and said she'd be happy to take the whole lot for us!  She even gave a sweet smile for our silly picture.  We certainly had some stragglers (addresses we were still waiting on, or envelopes that were addressed wrong on the first go-round)  but our save the dates were in the mail!

Save the Date! (Part II)

Javs didn't love the first picture I sent (the one in my quick/at work mock-up) because it didn't really show our faces and he thought it might be just a bit off for a Save the Date.  I eventually agreed.  And then it was so easy to choose which photo we did want to use after that - it seems silly to me (now) I didn't go with it in the first place!  It was the 'us' (don't you guys get sick of me saying that...) that I was hoping would be captured during our session with Andrea and Brian.  (no we don't always just flop on our sofa...) but we looked happy and comfortable.  It wasn't posed and it felt real.

We mocked up a couple of options in photoshop (him taking over when I got too frustrated and me asking for the computer back when I thought he was working too slowly.  Its sounds chaotic, but I think we were a pretty good team!)  and sent them to our family and wedding party for some opinions.  Luckily, their favorite was almost unanimous!  We had our front and back ready!  Now, to print them....

Thank goodness, in addition to save the date sites, I had also been keeping track of some printing sites (just in case!) that were recommended on my wedding blogsl.  We did a little price comparison and looked at different paper options with each place.  In the end, it was http://www.catprint.com/ that was the winner.  They were super reasonably priced and had good reviews (although not a ton of them).  We were also excited that they would send a free hard copy of our design for approval before the big print job!

**Here is where Javier and I made a mistake**

I swear I didn't want to open the box without Javs...

I will say that the Catprint customer service staff was super helpful (although not always as quick as I wanted them to be).  We sent off our designs, feeling the early light of accomplishment brushing our faces...only to have their team inform us that our files were not the right size and we would more than likely have some stuff cut off in the print if we stuck with what we had sent.  Hmm...Here started days of going back and forth with new files, many phone calls, and hesitancy from Catprint until they finally thought our design would print well. (by the way, I think it really was user error on our part - as I've mentioned, we were not photoshop experts)  Now, here comes the mistake: we were feeling some pressure to get these printed and out the door and therefore decided to fore go the hard copy approval before having our 100+ save the dates printed. They sent us a digital copy, but since the hard copy would take a few days to arrive and then we'd have to approve it before they even began printing, we said yes to the digital copy so they'd just hurry up and hit PRINT!

but he told me too!

You guys have seen them - they are, overall, very pretty.  We've gotten lots of compliments about them and I'm completely reassured when I hear people say how well they think the cards fit our style.  (YAY!)  But the truth is, if I had gotten this version as a hard copy, I definitely would have made some changes before having 100+ printed.  Oh well, I was pretty sad about it for a day (crazily contemplated having them all reprinted), but then realized it was really no big deal and I had to get over it. 

so i did :)

It is however a good example of the 'getting so caught up in it' that you kind of lose your senses a bit.  We were talking a matter of days that approving a hard copy might have added as far as getting these out to our guests.  But in that moment, I was so panicked and focused on getting them out exactly 6 months  before the wedding, that we rushed and made a mistake.

Lesson learned though: 1) start invitation stuff earlier (Javs and I have already started looking!) 2) two days will not matter, check and double check to make sure its what you want 3) even if its not perfect, its probably just you that is freaking out about it - everyone else is going to say 'they were lovely' and get on with their lives....

Great!  Now we have these beautifully designed, perfectly printed Save the Dates :)  but we got to get them to folks....we need envelopes.  So we spent a quick, ok reasonable, few hours in Paper Source looking at all the different paper options we had for the envelopes.  My goodness, I could get lost looking at paper in that store but I'll spare you the play by play recap of our time there.  Know that we pulled a bunch of envelopes we thought fit our 'colors,'  did a couple rounds of veto-ing, tried a few pen options on each and ended up buying 3 different colors so that we could decide later.  (Another mini mistake - we didn't have our physical Save the Dates yet and wanted to see how they would actually look with each envelope before we decided - so wait til you have your save the dates in hand to go envelope shopping -ooops!)

In the end we decided that we wanted to stick with the brown tones (our Save the Date was going to have a sepia finish).  We figured there would be other opportunities to bring in color and it just felt more consistent with what we were going with on the cards.  This ended up being a decision we were really happy with later.... :)

Save the Date! (Part I)

Javs is supposed to be blogging about our amazing find for a rehearsal dinner spot, but since he is slacking busy, I'll do some catching up on my blog posts!  Updating you guys on our Save the Dates is way overdue, but since you've hopefully received yours by now (except for Jo) its not like we've been holding you in total suspense.  But for the sake of documentation and honest divulging - I'll give the back ground on the birth of these babies.

Since google docs is blocked at my place of work(probably thanks to emma *cough*cough*) I've been creating draft emails to myself in gmail and storing wedding data in there.  My 'Save the Date' email draft is pretty out of control with links to all the sites I was looking to explore when it came to save the date time.  While I browsed these a bit, I'll completely admit that our engagement pictures really put the brakes on the idea of ordering an already-designed or templated save the date.  Javier and I weren't sure we were even going to use a picture for our save the date, but after looking through our favorite pictures from the e-session, I knew that there were a few I would be excited to share with our attendees via the save the dates.  As you read, I loved some of the pictures Andrea and Brian captured of me and Javs on our sofa at home and threw together this draft early in February (in about 90 seconds at my desk at work).  And so the idea to design our own save the dates began.

Kelsey kindly allowed us to use her photoshop and away we went.  Which is to say that we progressed ever so slowly through the maze of photoshop with little knowledge and less patience.  I must have googled 'how do you ____ in photoshop' about 12982743 times while working on the design of these bad boys.  But google (per usual) was super helpful and so we stumbled along creating a few options, tweaking spacing, fonts, colors, etc.  I'll be totally honest here; I really do love a lot about our save the dates, but I know I would still be tweaking these details, rearranging and shifting today if there hadn't been some pressure to get these out the door.  I guess its the blessing and curse of designing your own stuff - you can create it to be exactly how you want it, but its you that also has to declare it 'done.'  If you have even the slightly drop of perfectionism in you, that can be hard to do (it was something I struggled with a great deal).

In addition to designing our own, we also needed to make a decision on a fairly trendy save the date idea: to magnet or not?  There are some obvious advantages of sending out save the dates that are also magnets. The number one being that people will immediately stick it on their frig making it less likely to be lost in the shuffle.  This ritual leads to the other advantages; people will look at your date over and over (cause everyone goes in the frig) making it more likely that they will actually remember the date of your wedding, repeatedly (cause, lets face it - you probably go in there a lot) seeing the couples' smiling faces will build excitement and anticipation for the day of the wedding, and lastly, the joy that one can find only within the frig will begin to be associated with the couple making it more likely that the attendee will also feel joyous at the wedding.

While these advantages were appealing, there were some advantages to non-magnet save the dates that we wanted to consider as well; they are cheaper, they can be two sided! and your guests 98.73% of the time are going to stick it on the frig (using a magnet they already own) anyway so you'll absorb all the advantages listed above.  Sold.  We would go non-magnet and include a backside to our save the date.  In the end, this was extremely helpful because we could include some encouragement for our guests to book rooms for the, now football, weekend in Cville.  (book your rooms people!)  So we added 'back design' to our tasks to complete using photoshop and pressed on.

Time is flying...

What I wouldn't give for a time turner right about now.  No, don't worry!  I haven't missed saving a hippogriff or anything, I'm just shocked at how quickly time is flying.  It'd be nice to have the extra time to get some more stuff done!  You know, maybe some more work when I was doing wedding stuff or more wedding stuff while I was doing work....But alas, no letter at  eleven and no time turner now...a muggle I remain.

But, that's not to say Javs and I aren't working hard to continue chipping away at that 'to do' list!  Today marks 150....150 days til the wedding.  Doesn't it seem like I have one of these count down posts like once a month?  I know, its cause the time is literally flying by! I left us with some major items at our last calendar check, lets see how we've done:

-Address gathering for guest list - check!

-Send out Save the Dates - check! (and a future post)

-Engagement announcements in the paper - check! (all have been published now! and Nana has her copy to proudly show to all the residents at her assisted living community)

-Dress for Kels - check!

-Dress for Jess - check! (another post to come & contingent on Isabel finding a dress that will 'go')

-Dress for Isabel - we're getting closer!  She is diligently looking :)

-Boys Attire - hmmmmmm

-Rehearsal Dinner Locale -CHECK! (and a future post from Javs)

-Referring to any industry established timeline to see how we're doing -why would I do that?  but, I did look at a checklist that Crystal (our day of coordinator) provided and we're right on target! (mostly)

-Creating a 'to do' list with timeline - Javs did this!  We just haven't referred to it since he created it about 50 days ago...

we also

-Booked our florist!

-Confirmed a spot for brunch on Sunday

-Arranged transportation for our guests to and from Ash Lawn (important for you guys!)

-Officially completed our registries!

-Attended our first wedding as an engaged couple

-Bought and started using RosettaStone

-Mrs Cabezas bought fabric for her MOG dress (just yesterday)!  (she is having it made - how fun!)

Stuff we need to do in a bit of a hurry:

-Secure our last big vendors:

       -Tent (not really a tent, but sides for the pavilion in case it rains, dance floor, etc)

       -Ceremony Musicians

       -AV for Ceremony (if we want microphones and speakers)

       -Hairstylists

       -Make-up Artist (possibly - I'm debating doing my own makeup...)

-Decide what those silly boys are going to wear (especially if they need to buy suits!)

-Meet with our officiant (kind of pre-wedding counseling)

-Confirm a caterer for our rehearsal dinner

-Start some of the fun DIY projects we've got planned!

I really am sensing a shift in our wedding planning.  It kind of started when we looked at florists, but I think once we finish booking those last big vendors I'll really feel it; the freedom to start focusing on some fun details.  There are lots of fun ideas that we've thought of to add to our day and keep it 'us.'  I think we've reached a point where I feel organized and accomplished enough that we can finally start to work on those and I'm really looking forward to that.

Okay - attending a wedding as an engaged couple - they say (whoever they is) that you'll pay way more attention to detail and possibly struggle to resist the urge to compare what you're seeing with what you're planning.  While I certainly noticed more and did some comparing, (i.e. whispering to Javs that their ceremony chairs were the nicer chairs that we'll have at our reception, but not at our ceremony cause we're getting the cheaper chairs for our ceremony...) I had two major take aways that have stuck with me:

1) Their ceremony was so lovely and so them.  Javs and I have been focusing a lot on keeping the day 'us,' but I'll completely admit that more of that involves ideas about corn hole at cocktail hour and family style dinner service at the reception.  We've thought some about our ceremony, but this wedding has really inspired me to carve out some time to think about what we want to include during that portion of our day.  It is, after all, kind of the reason everyone is coming right?  I mean that's where the whole 'getting married' thing goes down.  So, I'm inspired to start thinking ceremony.

2) Oh my goodness, I think time is flying now, but that day is going to whiz by faster than I can even imagine.  I'm sure Kels' day flew by, I remember trying to be in the moment and know that the magnitude of the day hit me when I was walking down the aisle.  But I wasn't thinking 'bride' at Kels' wedding and I saw for the first time at this wedding, from a 'brides' perspective, just how quickly everything flew by.  It was a great reminder that while I'm excited about all these fun details, October 13th is really going to be about savoring the moment and the memories as they come.

In addition to my take aways, we also had SO much fun!  It made me pumped for the start of wedding season.  Now I'm looking forward to attending some more weddings and learning more great stuff!  Happy counting :)

la mujer escribe

As you guys know, Javs and I are headed to Chile for our honeymoon. *moment for fist pump*  We are seriously overdue in filling you in on all the juicy details we have planned for this amazing trip and as soon as we've actually planned some details, we'll get right on sharing them with you ;)  (we have plane tickets, so I know we're going!)  Regardless of details, one thing I knew I wanted to do in preparation for the trip....was to try and learn some Spanish.  There a million and one great reasons for me to embark on this journey to learn this language (including, but not limited to 1) I want my children to have a better shot at learning Spanish as they grow up, b) it could be insanely helpful whenever I finally get a teaching job in public schools and 4) as American citizen I am well aware of the fact that the US is swiftly approaching the time when Spanish will be the number 1 spoken language in our country) So the honeymoon seemed the perfect excuse time to pull up my boot straps and go for it!

So one of many car trip on the way to a wedding related appointment, Javs and I heard a commercial for a 'deal' Rosetta stone was offering.  (We had been investigating Spanish class options in the DC area - W&M was offering a summer class but it was Mon-Thurs every night.  There were several online options, but I had disliked my previous online class experience and was hesitant to start learning a language that way.  Several private or small group lessons were available, but all were very expensive.)  So when we heard the offer on the radio we both agreed it was worth calling to ask about it! 

Reasons we ended up buying Rosetta Stone

- The deal they were running (while no true discount) allowed us to return the whole thing if we weren't happy after 6 months of use.  The timing couldn't have been more perfect!  we were almost exactly 6 months from the wedding - so we figured we'd try it and if I learned nothing before the honeymoon - we could return it all!

- You can download the program to up to 2 computers.  This way if we did like the program we could download it to another  laptop in the future for our kids or my parents or whoever else was ready to learn!

- You can have up to 5 users on the program (nice for us because believe it or not, Javier and I are 'starting' at different levels here)  That means the system can track Javs' progress (he wants to brush up on some vocab and grammar) while tracking mine.  We can both pick up right where we left off, go back and redo activities we missed and move at our own pass without affecting the other user :) WIN.

- Flexibility.  I've taken classes while working a full time job so I know that I can do it.  But the idea of taking classes, working full time and planning a wedding with Javs felt like it might be asking for trouble  (especially if the class was Mon - Thurs)  and especially in the summer when it seems like there is always something going on.

- Supposedly it works.  And is fun!

- Javs did some negotiating and got us some cool add-ons: an awesome headset/microphone so that I can practice my pronunciation with the lessons, an extra MP3 so I can take some stuff to work and listen (that's right I'm working and listening to a woman say 'una nina, -ni, -na, una nina' over and over again) and the option to connect with Rosetta online (something we haven't explored yet, but I think could be cool?  maybe provides the chance chat with other users online - I don't know we'll see!)

So last night, armed with a glass of wine, I tried my first lesson (can you see my neat headphones/microphone?).  It was super cool!  I was amazed at how easy the program was to use.  As a Systems Analyst at a software company (yeah I have no idea what the means either) I was shocked at the lack of direction  provided.  They really just throw you in, but it was even more amazing to me how quickly I just figured it out.  Was totally intuitive.    The system uses a combination of audio, images, and text as you move through the lesson.  (Sometimes you hear speakers saying the words, sometimes you have to say the word, sometimes the words are written, sometimes there are pictures and you match the words, etc.) 

It is incredibly interactive and....well fun!  I would say I moved at a normal to quick pace (part of me just wanted to check out how a full lesson progressed) and so I easily finished within the 30 minutes it suggested I would take.  I was surprised 1) at how familiar I felt with the words at the end of the session.  I did some 'talking' to Javs afterwards (clarifying grammar, etc) and felt somewhat proud of my progress.  They really never feed you 'rules' (at least not yet) but run you through drills that repeat the correct combinations and structure. 2) that I got some stuff wrong. Aghast!  I'm totally going to blame it on my haste, but I did get some 'answers' wrong.  The system does a great job of tracking that and allowing you to go back and redo all or parts of the lesson to ensure you're comfortable.

I'll probably go through the whole lesson again (maybe sans wine?) just to make sure I'm really ready to move on, but I'm so glad I finally got started.  I'll keep you updated on my progress (maybe I'll be writing posts in Spanish before we leave!)  Adios!

What a site!

Our wedding website, that is! :) I guess you could call it a trend for brides and grooms today to set up a website where guests can visit to learn about the couples' wedding events, accomodations and information about the city where the wedding will take place (particularly if its a destination not all would be familiar with).  I said 'guess' and used the italics on the word trend because, unlike mason jars and colorful bridal shoes, this one has been around for years and seems more accepted as a standard these days.

Needless to say, Javs and I did decide to include this wedding trend in our plans and created our very own wedding website!  We had a couple of criteria that we wanted to keep in mind while creating the site: 1) that we used a free website option (there were so many available and we just couldn't rationalize spending $$ on something that we could get for free!) 2) that it was customizable (we wanted to have some control over loading pictures, arranging information and determining pages) 3) that it was relatively easy to use for guests who might visit and 4) that it still kept the 'us' feel that we've been trying to keep in mind throughout our planning!

Javier and I researched http://www.projectwedding.com/, http://www.ewedding.com/, http://www.weddingjojo.com/, http://www.weddingannouncer.com/, http://www.weddingwindow.com/ and http://www.mywedding.com/.  They all where free and offered a variety of 'themes,' but in the end - it was http://www.mywedding.com/ that offered the right combination or flexibility and us-ness (word I just made up) that we were looking for.

Theme....it took some time to pick.  There were some beautiful, flowery  and many heart focused themes that just didn't seem to fit our feel.  We started looking at many fall themed sites (mywedding.com had, no joke, a million options), but a lot of them felt a bit too cheesy.  We were trying to think about our wedding (we don't have a 'theme' for our wedding, but certainly have stuff we're excited about and are centering decisions around.)  Ash Lawn has amazing views and incredible nature that is all around.  Wedding guests, get pumped for some awesome views.  In addition, we've been focusing a lot on neutral colors in our palette.  So, we started to look up more 'earthy' themes and finally found one that we thought worked well :)

Content  Probably my favorite pages on the site are the Bridesmaids and Groomsmen & Usher pages.  For a variety of reasons we asked our wedding party to write their own bio for the website.  We thought it'd be fun to give them a chance to introduce themselves to our guests and were amazed how each individual's personality totally shown through in their write ups!  Read them, they are awesome!

The rest, Javs and I put together on a delightful Friday night, drinking Cville hard cider given to us as an engagement present. We focused mostly on the Accomodations page because we knew it was the most important.  With a football game scheduled for October 13th, we wanted to encourage guests to book those hotels!

Cville Pages  When I asked Javs to review the site one more time before we sent out our Save the Dates, he asked if we might combine the three pages we had devoted to Charlottesville (in addition to the page devoted to Ash Lawn).  He was, legitimately, worried that it might be a bit much to give each aspect of Cville its own page.  Its funny, I would never call ours a 'destination' wedding, but based on the rubber we've burned between DC and Cville so far - its painfully obvious that we're not planning a wedding in our (or my parents') town of residence.  But even during our quick and appointment packed visits I'm constantly reminded of how in love I am with Charlottesville.  I. love. that town.  And while I did select to share just three of the aspects of Cville that make it so amazing - I thought it important to include.  If our guests do have the chance to enjoy some of this town I love while they're at our wedding - maybe they'll leave understanding, just a hair, why we love it so much.  Javs laughed at me, but assured me it was fine to keep all three :)

Pictures  We also decided to include some pictures. We're having....a lot of people at the wedding.  And while it would have been awesome to have each of our guests present at all of the funnest (another made up word) moments of our courtship, the truth is you guys weren't always there.  (Although some of you were at a lot of them!)  Either way, we thought it might be fun to share some of the fun and sometimes silly moments we've shared through our years together.  (It was all that goofy stuff that made me want to marry him anyway ;)  I just looked through them trying to pick my favorite and couldn't.  (but this post has been a little picture shy so I grabbed this one to make reading this post look less like such a task.  We're getting ready to watch the 'A Bug's Life' show at Disney last year!)

Registries We threw these on here too!  If folks do want to get us a gift we wanted to make it easy for them to find the registries.  We didn't even realize it when we selected mywedding.com but they had this nifty tool that went and found our registries and then automatically showed the buttons.  Too cool!  Technology is amazing and I am constantly awed by it.  (thats right.  I work for a software company.  In their technology department....)

Alright, now go check it out yourselves!  (maybe a good distraction break for your Friday afternoon :)

Registered

Javier and I are finally all registered up :)  We went to Macy's the other Saturday, armed with one scanner, one Matron of Honor and the determination that we would find wine glasses that I thought were pretty and delicate and  Javs found to be sturdy enough to with stand his hand washing (that's right, my man washes dishes - he does it all!)!  I think we ended up spending something ridiculous like 3 hours in Macy's and true to form, Kels was a trooper through it all (remember her dress marathon?).  She even remembered to snap a few pictures so you dedicated blog readers could be in on the fun.  Here we are picking out some China :)  (Your may remember we picked out China in Crate and Barrel too, but wanted to see if we liked anything better here.) 

We also decided to pick out some crystal to go with it.  This became our 'big debate' item of the day (we seem to have had one at each store).  Thank goodness for Kels' patience, we must have stood in front of the crystal for a full 30 minutes of our time in Macy's.  We would take each piece we considered out, placing it next to the China we liked best.  Then there were the different pieces within each crystal pattern to consider: iced beverage, wine, goblet, champagne flute.  My goodness.  But decisions were made through smiles and some mockery and in the end Javs and I were both excited about the prospect of serving a fancy dinner on our newly selected china and crystal :)

**Advice Alert** (cause I haven't given any advice on here in a while)

Stop when you hit the wall. (And you will hit the wall.)

Most people who know me well (and I think most of you do) know that I do not like to shop.  I do not like to shop for myself, I do not like to shop for others.  Its not just clothes shopping - its the stores, its the crowds, its the decisions - its just not my thing.  (although I oddly kind of love grocery shopping? but that's it)  And I'm almost always the first one to hit my wall if I'm shopping in a group.  Anyway, despite my strong dislike for shopping - I truly enjoyed registering.  It was really fun.  Maybe it was my company or that this was the closest thing to a shopping spree experience I'll get (although we were selective in our items).  Either way, it was very fun.  But I still hit my wall.  (At Macy's it was when we started looking at luggage...I couldn't compare Samsonite (I was way off!) and TravelPro for another second.)

We had heard it from everyone (even employees at the stores where we were registering) 'Stop when its not fun anymore.'  Great advice (not even mine).  Please follow it.  We definitely hit that point during each scanner session where one (or both of us) fell into the 'I don't care.'  When you start discussing what beautiful and awesome items you're considering bringing into your home via loving and generous wedding guests and your response is 'I don't care' (or 'I just don't care anymore') then I think its best to walk away.  You're not in a good state to be picking the china your grandchildren will be eating off of 45 years from now.  (And the beauty of registry technology today - is that you can take a break, grab a beer, heck, even wait a few days and then come back to it online to review or make some final decisions!)

**Advice Alert**  Go back and check your registry.

For a couple of reasons.  First, we went back originally to make sure we didn't have duplicate items from one store to the other.  I mean we had purposefully registered for some of the same items at more than one store so that we could go back (online) and see which one we liked more and/or what was cheaper.  I've definitely seen others make the mistake of having that garlic press on their Macy's and Crate and Barrel registries.  Now, maybe they wanted two garlic presses, but Javs and I didn't - so we wanted to check that, in the whirlwind of picking all this awesome stuff out, we hadn't duplicated.

While reviewing for duplication, we learned about another reason to review - stuff goes out of stock.  We registered for some everyday dishes at William Sonoma that we loved!  But when we went back and looked at the registry online they were covered with all this red text: Item no longer available.  OUT OF STOCK! Tragedy.  But, glad we saw it so we could remove those ugly words from our gorgeous registry and pick something else out somewhere else :)

Not advice, just some words from me.

The best gift we could receive from each of our guests would be their presence at our wedding.  Its what all the brides on my blogs talk about in their recaps.  That there is a moment when you look around at your wedding and realize you're surrounded by the people you love and who love you most in the world.  Its one of (if not the only) times in your life that it will happen.  Gift enough.

However, if our guests extend their generosity to include a gift selected from our registry, I. am. so. excited. I am tickled pink at the idea of receiving any of the items we included on our wish lists.  When reviewing our Crate and Barrel registry the other day, I saw a feature they offer that allows you mark your '5 favorite' items on the registry to help guests prioritize items to purchase.  For a second, I thought 'I should mark our favorites!'  But then I started to look at our registry.  Where would I start?  Did even have a favorite?  An item I would be more excited to receive than the next?  No.  I'll be equally excited to receive the spatulas as I am to receive the All Clad saute pan!  So, if you want advice on what to get Javs and I for the wedding, I'd suggest doing what we do when perusing others' registries in search for the perfect gift:  Find an item from which with you can create the punniest message for the card. 

Examples:

     Purchased:     Clothes Hamper & Garlic Press
     Punny Card:   Don't let disagreements hamper your love or press your buttons!  Congratulations!

     Purchased:     Rooster Dish Towels & Cake Pans
     Punny Card:   So you can bake up some lovin' in your new chicken coop!  Congratulations!

see :)  They're punny!  And fun :)  If nothing else, maybe it'll make you laugh when you look at our registries!

oh!  and we did finally find those wine glasses at Macy's :)

April Showers bring May FLOWERS :)

Well we were a little light on the showers this April, but I"m crossing my fingers for some delightful May blooms all the same.  Speaking of flowers...we met with florists in Cville the other day to try to make sure we'll have some for the wedding!

 I should tell you now, that flowers have never been high on my priority list as far as details for the wedding.  (I know I've talked about priorities before and how important it is to identify your high ones.  Well its also important to identify have some low priorities too.  These would be areas where you don't have a ton of expectations or a distinct vision and/or where you're willing to spend less $$ because you're less specific about what you want.)  I think flowers are beautiful.  I truly enjoy having fresh flowers in my home and when Javier surprises me with some I squeal with delight as any good fiancee should.  But that's about where it ends.

As you can see from these inspiration boards that I brought with me to our two florist appointments - I don't have a real clear picture for what I want as far as flowers go on the day of the wedding.  I didn't have certain types of flowers I wanted and I wasn't completely sure about colors.  (And from what I understood, Javs didn't have strong preferences either.)  You can see that sometimes I pinned beautiful and colorful bridal bouquets and other times white bouquets.  Some of the arrangements look clean and classic while others have a more whimsical, wild flower look.  I also pinned a lot of fruit.  How did I want to incorporate fruit?  (I dunno?)   Hmmmmm....I was either going to be a florist's dream (an opportunity for creativity!  a flexible bride!) or a nightmare (a bride with no clue what she wants!)

So after our cup of joe and a Crystal pick me up :) we met with Amy Webb of Blue Ridge Floral designs (example of her work to the left).  We had heard about Amy through our caterer, who suggested that she might be within our price range since she kept her costs down by working out of her home/not having a store front. Amy's home was located outside of Cville (closer to Wintergreen) on a gorgeous little pond.  Amy and her pups (who awkwardly licked the lotion off me and Mom's legs through our entire meeting) made us feel right at home.  I was relieved that Amy found my cluelessness a blessing!  And made suggestions of local flowers that would be in season for our October wedding.  She did a great job walking us through - starting with my bouquet and then flowers for my girls, all the way down to centerpieces.  In addition she said she was flexible about us bringing our own stuff to help save $$ and said she'd provide a proposal with the cost for everything so we could pick and choose what would work for us.  We left the meeting pleased, feeling only slightly concerned that she mentioned she was worried all that we had discussed would not quite fit into the budget I had sent her earlier in the week.

Mom and Dad had to take off - but Javs and I had one more appointment with Jenn of Sugar Magnolia.  Since day one when we started asking for florist recommendations we've heard 'Sugar Magnolia!' 'Sugar Magnolia.' and 'Sugar Magnolia,'  but I was worried that with these glowing recommendations would come a too hot to handle bottom line.  I started to feel better when we arrived a the little shack barn store front that Jenn worked out of just off of 29.  It was....low key...and made me reconsider the idea that they were definitely out of our price range.  Javs and I sat and talked with Jenn and _____ (I cannot remember her name!) for over an hour.  Jenn was very laid back and felt, as Amy did, that my lack of specific ideas would be a blessing.  She named some of the same flowers we'd heard about from Amy as good options for October and seemed to draw a good feel from my pictures.  Then she took us upstairs to an attic that she had converted into a vase/tin/porcelain/container heaven.  Along the walls were countless options for our centerpieces that she'd collected through the years.  It. was. cool.  She also promised to be flexible about items we wanted to provide ourselves and said we'd receive a proposal with everything to review.

It was hard to compare the proposals side by side (each had slightly different ideas for our centerpieces and therefore priced them out differently) they were very similar over all.  Neither was below our budget, but with a few items cut (that we'll take care of ourselves) we felt comfortable going with either florist.  The following weekend we had a walk through at Ash Lawn with our caterer to lay out where tables, chairs, etc should all be placed for the wedding (since we're renting such stuff from them).  I decided to wait until after that appointment to make the call regarding our florist (so I'd know exactly how many tables we'd have and therefore how many centerpieces we'd need.)  Truthfully, Javs and I were already leaning Sugar Magnolia.  Sometimes its just chemistry and we'd agreed that we felt better after our meeting with Jenn just slightly over Amy.  When our caterer asked if we'd picked a florist at our appointment the following weekend we shared that we were debating between Blue Ridge and Sugar.  'Go with Sugar,' she said (yet another recommendation).  That did it.  We would!  I mailed them a deposit and the signed proposal today - another vendor down :) and happy flowers on the way!