Finishing touches

We are getting married!

Next week! 

It's almost time!

I finished my job and moved back home so I've had the last month to work on wedding details.

I started out with a long list of little things to finish up and have slowly been checking them off! I finished Cody's ring box, the flower girl basket, the unity candle, and made a crazy fast trip with my parents to move my things to Texas.

I had looked at buying our unity candle, but once I saw that they were $40+ and none that I really liked, I decided to go the DIY route.  I spent less than $5 on the candles and everything else I found in the wedding closet and found the holders in mom's candle cabinet. Recognize anything? I have a bunch of the purple belly bands left over from the invitations, so they are making an appearance in a few other projects. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

I also made little emergency kits for the wedding day. After Cody popped a button off his uniform at a Military Ball, I learned to always carry a sewing kit at times like these! I went to pick up two (one for the girls room, one for the guys) and realized we don't need everything that comes in the sewing kits they sell. I wandered over to the travel aisle and grabbed a couple Johnson & Johnson first aid kits for $0.99 each. I raided mom's sewing room (Thanks Mom!) and came up with this:

• Band-aids & alcohol swabs
• Sewing kits - buttons/thread/needles/scissors/safety pins
• Ibuprofen
• Allergy Medicine
• Mini Tide Stick - also from the travel aisle.

Mom had a bunch of those little ziploc baggies that spare buttons come in on new clothes.  They worked out perfectly to hold the sewing kits and medicine!  I didn't include scissors in the boys, since I only had one small pair and figured they had pocket knives or muscles to break the thread anyway.  All together this project ended up costing about $5.

We are pretty much ready to go, and only have a few more small things left to finish up!

10 days to go!

Choosing the music

 One of the awesome features of our church is the massive organ pipes above the alter.

I love them, and ya know why?

 Yep, every time they play the organ I picture this scene from the movie The Rescuer's.

Which then makes me giggle during church.

A few weeks ago I met with the music director at our church and picked out the music for our ceremony.

Since it's a catholic ceremony, I pretty much had no idea what music we wanted.  So we worked down the list with her playing three songs, I said which I liked best, and we moved onto the next thing on the list. It took less than an hour, and I'm pretty happy with our choices!  Hopefully she didn't notice me giggling while she was playing the organ though.

Need a movie refresher?

and then there were two...

Last night when I arrived at my RCIA class at our church I had mail waiting for me. Mail at class...not a good sign right? I opened it and saw the contract for our rehearsal dinner room that I need to fill out.  No big deal, saves me a phone call! Nope.  Not so lucky.  I read the message and realized it was for our reception on June 17th. What?!?  So we started with one reception site...then had none...then one...now two?!
 

I called in December to inquire if the church was available and get pricing options, and they mailed me the information.  It sounds like they wrote us down as a possible reservation and then people in the church office got switched around and the new person thought we had booked the date even though we didn't sign a contract or pay the deposit.  Luckily, our priest was in class Monday so I talked to him and he said it wasn't a problem and would clear it up.  Just a misunderstanding!

Either way, this definitely pushed me to get the rehearsal dinner room booked this week!

 

A little help from Zoey

Thursday evening found me once again sitting on the floor in my parents computer room printing our invites.

Zoey (the cutie pie up there) had gone to the vet early that day and whatever medicine they gave her had some crazy side effects. She was into everything, eating anything she could get her paws on, and wasn't hesitating to stick her face into yours to see what you were eating.  Kitty was whacked out.  She eventually burst into the computer room, crawled into my lap and settled down to keep me company.  

Or so I thought. 

She took a break to inspect all the things I had spread out onto the floor, peek at the laptop, try to eat my malted milk chocolate eggs, and climbed back onto my lap.  A couple minutes later she decided to investigate the laptop again...and this time I realized she had stepped onto the keyboard and changed Hampton Inn to "Hampty77ton Inn". Good thing I caught that before they printed right?  Nope.  I didn't realize she had actually stepped on the laptop the first time and my printer was happily spitting out perfectly printed cards that read "Hamptyton Inn".  Not cool cat. Not cool.

I thought I had thrown these all away, but when I was cutting them apart I found a few more.  Hopefully no one will find a 'Zoey original' accommodation card in their invitation!

Ten months down...

100 days to go! 

Judging by how quickly those 10 months went, I'm sure these last few months will fly by!

With that in mind, I have been trying to get as much done as possible. I started printing our invitations, which I'm sure has been hilarious to innocent bystanders (mom) as I sit on the floor of the computer room fighting with the printer and trying really hard to keep the fighting words in check while my nephew was around.  Although O was very helpful 'fixing' the printer for me! (I think he just liked to open the lid and watch the ink slide over)  I've also been working on programs, favors, ring bearer books, packing up my apartment and making long to-do lists! 

Honeymooning

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After searching through many states and honeymoon ideas, we settled on Michigan!

The town we will be staying in is right on the lake and near many wineries. Neither of us have been to Michigan either, so with the beach and fruity drinks it is the perfect spot!

 

We looked at many hotels but when I saw that this one delivers Ben and Jerry's 24hrs a day to your room I was hooked! Plus they offer free bike rentals (to work off all that ice cream?), and beach chairs/towels!

Being Michigan there are also many farms that let you pick and buy blueberries and other fruits that are in season.

We are excited to spend our honeymoon relaxing on the beach, winery hopping, and berry picking!

Looking for the perfect honeymoon spot

While I'm stuck at home waiting for my dad to come rescue me, I thought I should share our honeymoon plans!

Not that I have any desire to go there this week!

When we first started talking about where to go, I told Cody I didn't care as long as there was a beach and fruity drinks involved.  

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When we started to look into locations a little more, we realized we aren't sure how much leave time Cody would get. We decided that instead of spending time, and a good chunk of our budget, flying we would look into locations we could drive to. So we sat down one day and started tossing around ideas.

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Disney World was one option I threw out there.  It is awesome, near a beach, drive-able, and so much fun!

Plus you get to wear the Mickey and Minnie wedding ears. You know the ones with the little top hat and veil?

However, we've both been there before and we want to go someplace neither of us has gone.

Garden of the Gods: Colorado Springs.  Can you spot the kissing camels?

Colorado.  My all time favorite vacation spot! Gorgeous mountains, tons of outdoor hiking and fishing, the awesome sand dunes, and of course some awesome Native American art/history to be seen.  I was all set to call the Aunts and request to use their condo in the mountains! However, it is a location I am very familiar with.  So keeping in mind we were hunting for a place new to both of us we kept searching.

We tossed around so many ideas I honestly don't remember them all.  Washington D.C would have been really cool but ultimately I would have gone all Art Historian dork and dragged Cody all over.  Besides, he is probably still recovering from my excitement at discovering the Aztec/Mayan/Native American exhibit at the Houston Natural History Museum.  (That family I scared off by rushing from mask to mask and loudly telling Cody what the exhibit label had left off is probably scarred for life).  

Ultimately we decided we would really like to find a place like Casa de Loco in the Ozarks.  We stayed there one weekend and had a blast.  It was a winery near a state park so we got to drink lots of wine, hike, check out the local castle ruins, and try all sorts of yummy food! However, going to Casa wasn't somewhere new for us.  We did a little more searching and stumbled upon a location that is similar but very new to both of us.

Ha Ha Tonka State Park

Up next: Our honeymoon destination!