Progress...?

So the last two weeks have been extremely chaotic for me. There has barely been time to breathe, let alone time to do any wedding planning. I thought having this blog would help me stay motivated, but it hasn't been working out so well. (As I mentioned in a previous post, I am a master procrastinator.)

Last night Mr. E. and I confirmed our officiant, and that is all the progress I've made in two weeks. I don't even dare log in to The Knot for fear of seeing 855,984,954,877 things over-due. It's times like these that I wish I had a wedding planner. I feel like I just need someone to keep me on track with this whole thing. (Although it might be a little late. I pretty much de-railed the entire wedding train in the beginning of August.)

Anywhoo... Since I am obsessed with candy and will have as much of it as humanly possible at my wedding, here are some inspiration pictures. Unfortunately, I cannot remember where they came from. If you can remember, please let me know!

Shopping

Mr. E. and I had a very successful wedding present shopping trip the other night. I learned that he likes Waterford crystal! Who would have thought that he had an opinion on crystal.
Anywho! While I was picking out the presents for our friends, I realized the girl helping me had on the same engagement ring!
So I said to her excitedly, "Oh my gosh! We have the same engagement ring! I've never seen anyone with the same ring before!"
"Neither have I," she said.
"That's so neat!"
As I wandered away to pick out the rest of our gift, Mr. E. said to me that it probably wasn't polite to mention that we have the same engagement ring. He said most girls don't like it when someone wears the same dress, so they probably really wouldn't like seeing someone else with he same ring.
Personally, I don't know what he's talking about. I though we were like engagement ring sisters! But, I usually have a different view about things than most girls.
My ring sister was very nice and asked about our wedding plans and I asked about hers. It was a nice conversation, but I didn't mention the ring thing again.
Was Mr. E. right? Do brides-to-be really place that much importance on being the only one with their ring? I mean, I think the ring is uncommon, but I was under no illusions about it being unique. Do you have a truly unique ring? If you don't, would it bother you if you met someone with the same ring?

P.S. I found out last night that I won the Papeterie invitation naming contest over at Snippet and Ink! My prize is a $300 gift certificate to their store! Now I just have to pick out which invitations I like best!

Presents!

*
I love presents. I love birthday presents, and anniversary presents, and Christmas presents, and for-no-reason-at-all-except-you're-my-friend presents. I love giving and receiving presents. I just think presents are wonderful.
All this talk about presents has been brought on because Mr. E. and I are going shopping for a friend's wedding present tonight. They have registered at Macy's, so that is where we will start, but I'm still not sure how I feel about buying a present off a registry. Part of me feels like it's really impersonal. The other part of me feels like if they registered for it, they would probably be really glad to receive it. Since the couple getting married are close family friends, I think I will probably go with something on their registry and something not on the registry that goes along with the registry gift. The best of both worlds, right?
While I feel conflicted about buying gifts from a registry, I know exactly how I feel about registering. Thrilled is the best way to describe it. While Mr. E. and I haven't registered for anything yet, I know the process will be wonderful. I have been asking Mr. E. if we could do a trial registry for over a year now (yes, I know, we weren't even engaged then. That's why it would be a trial registry). Mr. E. has always said that would be wrong (damn his morals!) But now my time is here!
While I am excited to buy wedding presents for my friends, I am also hoping this trip will make Mr. E. realize we really should get started on this registry thing (he is blissfully unaware that you register anywhere other than Macy's...boy is he going to be in for it!)

*Picture from The Knot

The Guest List

As it would turn out Mr. E. and I are what you would call, "Professional Procrastinators". I told you that on Friday night we were supposed to finalize our guest list for the ceremony....well, guess what we didn't do. Guess what we also didn't do on Saturday, Sunday or Monday night. That's right, we have made absolutely no headway on the guest list.

And, to be honest, our first go-around with this whole guest list thing wasn't exactly...productive. (That is code for we had 200 people on the list and I was overwhelmed thinking about how we would feed so many people and he was overwhelmed thinking about what would happen if Great Aunt Gertrude wasn't invited.)

So, the wedding planning was halted for a coupe of weeks while we both cooled off. Even then we still couldn't figure out how to get the guest list smaller (or how to explain to our guests that dinner would consist of peanuts and skittles).

It was only when I found this dress that I came up with the totally brilliant solution! Have a small wedding for family only one day, and a larger, casual reception on a different day for all our friends and family. So, that is the new plan. Only, now we have to decide which family members will be invited to the ceremony, and we're trying to keep it small (sorry Great Aunt Gertrude). We love our large families, and it's so hard to choose who not to invite, hence the guest list not being done. I guess tomorrow is another day.



p.s. Mr. E. is downstairs making a pie right now! I am the luckiest girl in the world.

The Bouquet

Now, I have never given much though to my bridal bouquet, I've always just viewed it as flowers. But I have to admit, when I saw these gorgeous bouquets by DK Designs I literally gasped. The Etsy bio says they specialize "in handcrafted clay floral designs made of ClayCraft Soft Clay by DECO." And that, "Each item is one of a kind, handcrafted one petal at a time." I am seriously considering ordering the Swarovski crystal and Tiffany blue one.





And the floral hair pieces are so amazing! The best part is, you could totally wear that over and over again. How great to have a piece of your wedding you could wear anytime.

The Proposal

Over at my favorite blog, A Practical Wedding ,Meg asked about the silliest wedding fight we've had with our partners. I have to say that one of the silliest was the proposal.


Since Mr. E and I have been together for over four years now (and we've known we wanted to get married for, oh about four years) I knew a proposal was coming. Heck, I had even picked out my own ring. It was up to him to decide the perfect way to ask me (and he could have gotten pretty elaborate since he knew I wouldn't say no). Let me set the scene for you....


After a long hard day of shopping with my sister, I returned home loaded down with bags (and very full from the bread pudding we had at dinner.) I had set my bags of spoils down on the floor and unbuttoned my jeans to get a little extra breathing room. (And don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. We've all been there!) Mr. E comes in, sits down on the floor with me, and starts a conversation that goes like this:


Mr. E: "So, what did you get today?"

Alice: "Oh, we went to Nordstrom and I got--" (at which point I am interrupted by Mr. E)

Mr. E: "Look what I got." (as he pulls a ring box out of his pocket and opens it up)

A.: "Oh!"

Mr. E: "Do you wanna put it on?"

A.: "But my pants aren't even buttoned."


~~End Scene~~


And that was the proposal. At which point I told him it wasn't very romantic and he needed to try again. So he closed up the box and said a few words about how he loved me and would I marry him, and I accepted (I was never going to not accept). And now we have a horrible proposal story that we can someday share with our children. Ha!


The good news is that lack-luster proposals run in the family. My parents have been married for 24 years, and my aunt and uncle almost as long and they all had similar stories. Who knows, maybe it's a good omen. Did anyone else have a less-than-stellar proposal?

P.S. Tonight Mr. E. and I are going to have a Very Serious Conversation...about our guest list. Wish me luck!

The First Post

Hello All,

My name is Alice, and I have recently followed the White Rabbit down his little bunny hole and into a world I like to call WeddingLand. It all happened when my wonderful boyfriend of four years (we'll call him Mr. E) proposed in May. As soon as we were "officially" engaged, my journey began.
I'm not your traditional bride-to-be (if there is such a thing) and almost everything to do with weddings is foreign to me. I'm hoping to use this blog to record my Adventures In WeddingLand, and stay sane in the months leading up to the wedding.