211 days...

Less than 7 months to go until the wedding :) It seems so far, yet so close!

So I haven't updated in almost two weeks... Not that too much has happened. Only a few things:

First off,

I GOT MY DRESS! 

Well, of course I already bought my dress last month, but it's home with momma now! So I can look at it whenever I want. Of course, I don't ;) It hangs in the closet in the guest bedroom. It won't fit in our huge walk in closet with the shelf unit and all of Christopher's clothes, hehe ;)

More great news.... I got a call from Zimmer Brothers, from Brian (our "jeweler" I suppose) last Friday because they had a few rings for me to look at fitting my "dream band" description. Thankfully, he was so much better than the lady the previous week. Brian had me trying on all different types of bands... And I found one I love! It's round diamonds instead of princess cut. What we learned: Princess cut diamonds are less expensive solitaire, yet more expensive in clusters because princess cut diamonds are deeper than round diamonds. So moral of the story is round diamonds are less expensive (and shinier) in a wedding band than princess cut. So my band will be diamonds half way around, full frontal glitz :) Here are the rings together.... It was taken on my cell phone, so it's a bad quality picture, but if you look from a distance it's real pretty:

 

Next up, we did some honeymoon researching. At first we were thinking another cruise, as we had a good time last April and really liked Norwegian Cruise Lines. Problem: NCL doesn't have any cruises around our wedding date from New York, which we prefer to disembark from. I found a Royal Caribbean cruise that fit our time frame disembarking from New Jersey.... But we're hesitant to try Royal because we loved NCL's freestyle cruising. Now we are also looking at all-inclusive resorts. I ordered a brochure from Sandals out of curiosity and I'm pretty much in love. I love that alcohol is included, not an extra expense as it was on the cruise. We're loving Sandals Grande Antigua, it's been voted the most romantic resort:

And that's the suite we're thinking about. It's called the Monte Carlo Honeymoon Oceanview Suite. I like that it's called a honeymoon suite. It makes it sound even more romantic, doesn't it? And oh look, you can see the ocean in the picture from the balcony! And the bathroom has a whirlpool tub (that's basically why Chris loves it!).

In addition to ring shopping and honeymoon browsing aka the fun stuff, we also discussed some budget stuff with my mom last weekend. I think it's going to be completely do-able for about $4-5k. Which is about what we can afford, anyways. No more than that!

That about wraps up the past two weeks worth of our road to the aisle I'd say!

P.S. I'm liking this picture function! :)

A Few Minor Accomplishments

So we've accomplished a few "wedding things" this week...

First and foremost, I got an e-mail from David's Bridal last Friday that my wedding dress is in! So soon, too! They told us October 2nd! It's in almost a month earlier than anticipated! I scheduled my first "fitting" for this upcoming Friday. Mom and Grams are coming with me. I hear we're also going out to lunch :)

On Monday we took a walk on the farm to check out locations to hold the ceremony and reception. We had four different options:

1. The place where we will build our future home. Probably in 2011/2012.
2. A field a little beyond the future home; a flat area that used to be an "airstrip" for remote-control planes.
3. A little secluded field, close to the woods.
4. A field close to Chris' parents house/right next to the pastures.

We immediately rejected option #1 due to closeness to the road (although it was my favorite idea) and think we may have narrowed it down to option #3. The only problem with the location is the distance away from where people are parking (Wynn & Judy's house), if people wanted to leave early. But c'mon... Who would really want to leave our party early, anyways?! Also, one of the perks of option #4 is the possible use of the house bathroom instead of renting a port-a-potty... I think I like the complete seclusion of the little field best though :)

On Friday (our three year anniversary! ♥) we went to Zimmer Brothers to get my engagement ring cleaned and to look at wedding bands! Chris found the one he wants; it's a metal called tungsten. He's pretty excited about it. Originally he wanted titanium but was put off at how light-weight it is. Tungsten is a little heavier and just as durable it sounds like! As for my wedding band search.... It was a little upsetting. My engagement ring is quite unique (the gorgeous setting, that is). We remember when we went looking at engagement rings, there was a brochure/pamphlet that I saw the ring in and liked it, and then Chris ordered it for me (I didn't know what he was getting me though, I just showed him what I liked). We also remember there being pictures of accompanying wedding bands in the pamphlet. However, Zimmer Brothers did not have the pamphlet anymore, nor any record of it in my file. The guy who we dealt with, Brian, wasn't there when we went yesterday so we're hoping maybe he remembers. The lady we were dealing with seemed a little flaky. Think we'll make sure Brian is there next time we go. Anyways... I looked at some other rings, which were really pretty but just didn't feel right with my engagement ring. The manager came out and asked exactly what we're looking for and said he was going to try to search to see if they have anything similar and if not to estimate the cost of making one. Yikes! Sounds expensive to me... It's hard cause I have exactly what I want pictured in my mind...

Also, Chris finally asked his brother to be his best man! Whew. I've only been bugging him about it for the past month! He also asked Eric to be a groomsmen, but Eric is unsure if he'll be able to make it or not due to school and finals. So I think I have to re-adjust my number of bridesmaids... 6 and 2 is not going to work out well, plus it will look a tad bit silly. We'll have to see!

I'll keep you updated!

Welcome!

Oh, hi! Glad you found the blog :)

This is going to be my "wedding journal" to keep our close family and friends up-to-date with the planning process, hence the additional password.

Finally got the wedding website almost complete! It has as much information as I do now, anyways. I think I'm too obsessed with it though. I'm spending more time on planning our wedding website than the actual wedding planning... Don't even get me started about the lack of homework I'm getting done... Just kidding, Mom, I'm getting it done!

I really don't have too much to write at this point... So far we've got the ceremony and reception venues (the farm!) -- although the particular area is still undecided. I'm going to scope the farm this weekend and see. And I bought my dress last month! I love it! Also, I started working on making some save the dates and invitations earlier this week. It's probably a little too early in the planning process to have them done, but they're just ideas. I'm sure my ideas will change in the next 232 days!

Stay tuned!