My Bible

One of the first things I did after getting engaged was put together a wedding binder to keep all of my inspiration pictures/ideas and pricing/contracts from vendors. I wanted everything in one handy, organized location. After all this is hands down the biggest, most expensive party I have ever and probably will ever throw. It was imperative for me to be as organized as possible for fear of losing my mind completely otherwise.

Overall I would say I'm fairly organized in my daily life though I definitely would not classify myself as OCD or anal retentive. Planning this wedding has really put my organizational skills to the test and I find that it has carried over into other areas of my life...not that you would know it if you could see my desk at work right now.

Initially I thought of buying one of those fancy schmancy pre-made wedding organizers. I found a few at Barnes and Noble but none that were really setup in a way that I preferred and many of them had a bunch of extra information that I didn't really need. So I saved myself about $20 and went old school style with a big white binder, some dividers and sheet protectors and now I'm able to add/delete as I need to.

Here are some pics of my Wedding Bible which btw I rarely leave home without.

I'm not super artistic so my cover is pretty boring.

All of my different dividers. I've had to clean out this binder about 3 times already to keep it from exploding.

An example of some of my inspiration photos I have inside

The way I have my notebook setup is that when you first open it I have my checklist. Then it's goes in the following order:

-Budget/Guest List- including everyone's addresses and now our RSVP tracking spreadsheet

-Venue- has the pricing from the venues I visited and my contract with my actual venue

-Attire- has pictures of my bridesmaid, flower girl and mother of the bride dresses. A pic of my dress is NOT in there. Also, includes pics of my shoes and hairstyles I like and my dress receipts as well as the Tux information.

-Catering/Cake- has our catering and cake contract and pictures of cakes that I like

-Flowers/Decor- lots of inspiration pictures in this section along with my contract for my florist

-Stationery- inspiration photos of invitations, programs etc.

-Photography/Music- contracts for the photographer (needs to be updated) and DJ and our growing list of Do No Play songs

-Miscellanous- This has my honeymoon information, hotel room block contract and now my limo contract along with anything else I decide to stick back there.

I plan to add a new section this weekend for the ceremony which will include our readings and the vows we like and other aspects we want to incorporate into the actual ceremony.

My wedding binder has been a lifesaver on several occasions. I take it with me to all my vendor meetings and even will bring it with me to work many times. I do think that Kristian gets a little nervous everytime I pull it out though and he seems hesitant to go near it for fear of messing it up somehow.

Walking Through It

In the past two weeks I've done two walk thrus at our venue Hollin Hall. The first walk thru was done with our caterer and the venue coordinator to go over where we wanted to setup all the tables, the buffet, the bar, the cake table etc. We also discussed our rain plan since our ceremony is set to take place out in the gardens. We actually came up with two alternate rain plans depending on the extent of the bad weather.

This past Saturday Kristian and I met up with my mom, her cousin and our three Day of Coordinators at the venue again, this time so that the ladies could see the site in person and so that I could go over the plans with them since they couldn't come to the meeting with the caterer. We also discussed how we wanted the tables decorated since that will be their big job. They brought a bunch of decorations that they already had and came up with some really great ideas to incorporate the items I've bought and items they can provide. They even came up with a great plan for decorating the hideous chairs that the site provides...unfortunately renting chair covers or new chairs is not in the budget.

Below are some pictures of our venue and an explanation of our plans.

This is a picture of Hollin Hall which is the highest point in southern Fairfax County, it was once part of a 2,000-acre plantation owned by Revolutionary War patriot George Mason. George Mason's son, Thomson Mason, built the original Hollin Hall home which burned in 1824. In 1916, industrialist Harley Wilson built an elegant new Hollin Hall. Many prominent Americans, including Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Carl Sandburg, visited the home and its brick-walled gardens

This is a picture of the boxwood garden where we will be having our ceremony (weather permitting)

A picture of the trellis the wedding party and I will be walking thru and down the "aisle"

Our backup plan if let's say it's raining all morning and the grounds are soggy or muddy but then clears up in time for the ceremony. We will have the ceremony on this terrace, that way we won't have to worry about the guests or myself having to walk on muddy grass but we can still have the ceremony outside.

What the terrace looks like setup with chairs.

After the ceremony the guests will move to the Wisteria Arbor behind the main house for the cocktail hour. There is also a little maze garden to the right of the picture that guests can check out.
If it's raining the cocktail hour will be held in the fireplace room inside the house. They also have small receptions in this room.

This is the Meeting House which is the building next to the Hollin Hall. This will be the building where the reception will be held.

Once you enter the Meeting House you come into the entrance room where the buffet will be setup along with escort card and guest book tables.

This is the main room where the dinner and dancing will take place. The tables will be placed in a circle as in the picture with th dance floor in the middle. Unfortunately these are not the chairs that come with the site, we would have to rent these for about $6/chair.

We will be doing one long head table similar to this with the whole bridal party (and their dates) seated on both sides of the table. Since the bridal party is made up of our closest friends we really wanted to be able to sit with all of them. The cake table will be in front of those double doors leading outside.

This is a view of the other end of the room. The stage is where the DJ will be setup. Now if it's raining during the ceremony we will get married in here, facing the direction of the stage with chairs on either side creating an aisle down the middle. This definitely is not ideal since we'll need to have some of the already setup reception dinner tables lining the back wall. There just wouldn't be enough time during the cocktail hour to setup all the tables, they need to be setup in advance. Fortunately the tables wouldn't be in any of the pictures taken from this angle so it's not a huge issue. They would then turnover the room for dinner while the guests are next door at the house for cocktails.

So those are our plans. What do you all think? Any suggestions? I'm going to try to post pictures at some point of our centerpiece mockups which I think will be really pretty.

Easter Roundup

Hope everyone had a fantastic Easter weekend. The weather here was beautiful and we had a very productive weekend with wedding stuff as well (more on that in another post). But I wanted to just post a few pics of our Easter celebration from yesterday with Kristian's family. His Aunt hosted our Easter lunch and we had some amazing food and drinks, the kids participated in an Easter egg hunt and water balloon fight. It was a great time with my future in-laws! **Don't forget to checkout the videos I posted from this weekend...funny shit!

Isn't this the cutest centerpiece. Those are real Peeps attached to the vase!

Everyone got their own mini Easter basket!

Posing with his Aunt's new dog Bonnie...she is so cute we almost took her home.The whole house was decorated for the holiday. I've never seen so many Easter decorations in one place.

My sexy Easter pose

Kristian showing the kiddies how to properly swing on the tree rope.

Cat Hates Eggs

We discovered a few months ago that our cat Halpert does NOT like eggs. Whether they are scrambled, fried or hard boiled he is not a fan. How do we know this? Well we offered him some one day and he literally gagged! He did not vomit but he did a full on gag. I've never seen a cat do it before. So of course us being the mean, horrible cat parents we are now offer Halpert eggs whenever we have them to test and see if he has the same reaction and without fail he does EVERY. TIME.

Well thanks to our new handy dandy mini video camera we got for my shower we recorded Halpert's reaction to eggs this morning. It's pretty hysterical...don't worry, he doesn't actually vomit. We made two videos and he did it both times. Please note in the second video I've been awake for maybe 15 minutes hence no makeup (not my best look). We were eating bacon and egg sandwiches on our balcony. There is also a cameo in the second video of our other cat Wendal.

Enjoy!

Gotcha!

Yesterday I had a routine checkup with my lady parts doctor which Kristian obviously knew about.

This morning I sent him the following text

"Hey I just got a call from my doc about my appt. yesterday. I'm pregnant!


April Fool's"

Yes I'm evil. Though in my defense I would hope he would know that when/if I ever get pregnant I won't tell him via text message.

He called me and told me that for the 2 seconds between when he read the words 'I'm pregnant' and scrolled down to see the April Fool's he started to sweat and almost shit his pants. Good to know that would be his reaction...guess I should continue with my birth control for a little while longer :)

He claimed the only reason he fell for it was because he knew I was at the doctor's yesterday so it didn't seem that far fetched. Poor thing.

Ghosts of Boyfriends Past

It was bound to happen eventually and I can't really be too surprised since I'm the queen of Internet stalking but this morning I received a friend request and email from an ex-boyfriend on Facebook. Actually he's not just any ex-boyfriend, he was my first really serious boyfriend, the first boy that cheated on me (that I know of) and the first boy to really break my heart.

Now I don't want to give the wrong impression that I'm somehow still broken hearted over this guy or that I've spent the past 9 years missing him because that could not be further from the truth. Trust. This kid was a hot mess, all my friends and family hated him, he was even banned from coming to my house and my brother would hang up on him whenever he called me. He was a loser with a capital L.

Why did I date him? Well mainly because I was a dumb 17 year old when I met him and I thought he was completely different from who he actually turned out to be. Meaning I thought he was a cute, funny, preppy guy and really he was a ghetto, wanna be the next Eminem high school dropout.

We haven't spoken to or seen each other since 2001 when he moved to Missouri and basically dropped off the radar. Over the years I have wondered about whatever happened to him and if he ever ended up in jail, which wouldn't have surprised me. Or if maybe he grew up, got his act together and became an upstanding member of society.

Well based on what I could tell from his profile, his almost 30 year old self isn't much different than the wanna-be ghetto superstar 17 year old boy I met. Sad really. In his email he mentioned he has a baby girl now though his profile says he's single. The only thing surprising about this is that it didn't happen sooner.

I did write him back, congratulated him on his baby and told him I was getting married soon.

I can't believe after this long without any contact he pops back up less than 2 months before I get married. Maybe it's God way of reminding me how far I've come and how amazing Kristian is compared to the men from my past. Not that I really needed that reminder :)

Girls Weekend

My bridal shower/bachelorette party this past weekend went really well. It was great seeing everyone and spending some quality time with some of my favorite girls.

My bridesmaid Colleen and I rode down to Raleigh together and arrived Friday night. We stayed with my MOH Krista and after going to dinner with her, her husband Todd and their friend Mike we promptly fell asleep. It had been a long day.

Saturday we went for a quick breakfast at Panera and then while the girls were setting up I went for a manicure. The girls had setup some tasty little finger foods along with some beer and wine. It was a small group of some of my college friends but I prefer smaller groups, makes thing much easier.

The 'theme' of the shower was "Around the House" apparently everyone was assigned a room of the house and they had to buy a present that would go in that room. I have to say the funniest gift that we got based on the theme was from my friend Emily who gave us Mini video camcorder we registered for to go with her assigned room which was the Bedroom! I love how that girl's mind works!

In addition to the theme everyone was sent a card with the invitation to write a memory they have of me so the shower turned into somewhat of a roast with me reading a bunch of embarassing moments that my friends so kindly decided to remind me of!

We got a lot of great gifts and when I got home and showed Kristian everything he really geeked out over all the kitchen stuff since he's the resident cook in our household. I was even surprised with a gift from my friend Spanky's parents which I thought was super sweet.

After the shower we all just sat around and laughed, gossiped and caught up for the next 2 hours until it was finally time to get ready to go out.

Even though I told them NO Penis paraphenalia they did buy me a Bachelorette sash and tiara to wear. I left the tiara at home but did wear the sash...I figured it might help us get some free drinks...and it did!

We went to dinner at The Rockford in downtown Raleigh then off to a bar called The Patio (I think) for drinks. A very enthusiastic WVU fan came over and bought us all drinks and shots since he was celebrating WVU's win that night (side note- I have them set to win on my bracket). Our bartendar was great and after finding out two of the girls are pregnant he continued to bring them juice and water free of charge. When I tried to buy myself a beer he refused to charge me. Gotta love the sash!

Everyone seemed to have a great time and despite us being a bit older now and not able to party like we use to the night was a success. I can't thank my friends enough for helping me celebrate!

(The food setup)

(Cheers!)

(My ribbon bouquet)

(With 3 of my 4 bridesmaids...the girls on each end are the ones that are pregnant!)

(My friend Emily)

(My bachelorette gear...the tiara stayed at home!)

(dinner at The Rockford)

(there's Spanky doing a pretty standard pose)

(The mom's to be and our DD's for the night!)

(The WVU boy was a big fan of Jager Bombs)

(My good hair picture)

(Not sure why I look so terrified in this picture)

(Halpert helping us unpack the gifts when I got home)