.happy 2010.

Happy New Year! This is the year in which I will be married. Yippeeee! While it seems that it can’t get here fast enough, it is really right around the corner.

The planning is ho-hum, but not wanting to start the New Year with an ugly blog, I will focus on the good. The bad and ugly will come tomorrow.

With 103days until the wedding, we have:
1. Started our pre-marital sessions (another blog will elaborate!)
2. Are starting our dance lessons tonite. I am white. I can’t dance.
3. Our invites are going SOON! Yes, it is three months early, but we have a TON of OOT guests and they are getting their invites soon, it will also make for hunting down people for RSVPs a TON easier.
4. My shower is in one month.
5. Make up is booked, yay!
6. My candy buffet has been reconfirmed.
7. We are meeting with our vendors slowly and surely to wrap up details.
8. Next week I meet with someone about creating a head/hair piece for me!
9. Mr. Nearlywed and I are really working well together as a team
10. I AM GETTING MARRIED!

There are many more good things, but that is what is making me happy right now, while I am in the middle of wedding chaos. Again, that post is scheduled for tomorrow.

Yes, I still owe you more on flowers, our invites, our DJ and videographer…. Stay tuned.

I wish you ALL a HAPPY NEW YEAR! And Happy wedding year, a happy engagement year, a happy dating year, a happy year of being in your BFFs wedding because it means the world to her, trust me, I know this.

.where i've been, part 1.

Whew….quite a few months it has been in the world of wedding planning. It feels like I took a nap back in July and woke up to now December. So let me start back with where I feel I’ve left off. I told you that we changed our venue and I updated you with both photos and stories and reasons why.

Then, I’ve almost decided upon flowers. Almost. I just need to pare down a few things to fit within my budget. We decided on a fabu four tiered cake. Invites are approved and the check has been sent. We booked a DJ and an officiate. We solidified a date & location for my bridal shower in Las Vegas. Mr. Nearlywed has almost planned his entire bachelor party while mine….well…. I don’t know where or if mine stands yet. I spoke with someone regarding music for the ceremony and we have a menu tasting next month. We don’t have songs picked out and my do not play list still lives in my head.

I almost have shoes, still need accessories, jewels and undergarments….le sigh.
Today, we are 136 days out from the wedding. Remember my 365 blog?? Over 200 days ago?!?! Yea, me too.

So what do I owe you for blogs? Well I need to blog about my experience with my florist. Show you pics of the cake. Talk about finding out minister. How awesome our DJ will be. That should give me a good start. Are you ready, readers? Stay tuned, I am going to hammer these out and post them ASAP.

.results of my procrastination.

If I followed my checklists from various sites like Project Wedding, Wedding Wire, or The Knot, I would have completed this one task back in June. It is now October. What task is this? Finding an Officiant. Tisk-task.

I just figured that everyone would happen to be available on our wedding day at our wedding time. In April. On a Saturday. We attempted to make an appointment with one lovely option and she was booked. Yes, a "she". Her ceremony seemed fabu and her voice was soothing and calming. I could tell that the "she" part sent Mil into a tither but regardless, we are unable to book this lady.

My friend's father is a Rabbi with a great ceremony. No, I am not Jewish. Flo and I are both Catholic with weekly church going parents. I knew deep down that Flo really wanted a Catholic influenced ceremony. Me? Well I could take it or leave it. I want my ceremony outside and that is more important than having it be Catholic. More of my time is spent outside than in church. Or judjah as Ster and I would call it. ::Hi, Ster::

Anywho, Rabbi Craig reached out to several of his colleagues once he heard that we were both Catholic. As luck would have it, today, after I nearly had another- yes, another- breakdown he gave us the contact information of a former Priest who left the Priesthood for marriage. Wow- being married must be something fabu.

Our first appt with him is November 7th. Our initial convos were great and we are quite happy with this connection. Flo finally admitted that he wanted Catholicism to be a part of the ceremony to appease our parents. I can tell you that while, yes, this will make my parents happy, they never would have made mention of it being a non denominational ceremony performed by a Rabbi. This is one of those subjects that was more important to Flo and his family than to me and mine and is why I searched high and low to find something to closely resemble a religious ceremony! :) I knew that it was important to Flo without him having to say anything. Maybe my wifey sixth sense is already kicking in?!?

.let them eat cake.

Since the beginning of time, I always thought that cake tasting would be my fave task of the wedding planning. So far, so right. Now, with the aid of insulin, I can freely taste away. This was something that had worried me while my pancreas still functioned slightly. Now, no worries! Just take my doses and eat, eat, eat!

We did our first tasting last nite at a new, cute little place called Gimme Some Sugar. Both Kristen and Miranda are fun, creative and full of energy! There are people that you can instantly click with and there are those where it takes time. This was instant! We tried three flavors- a chocolate, a white and a red! J But they are more than just white, chocolate and red… however, I am keeping the flavors a surprise. We may want to do one more tasting and change up the white, I am not sure.

Cake tasting is awesome, so is Gimme Some Sugar….but I hope it’s not the last tasting that we do!

Here is the inspiration for our cake. The realization will be kept secret until after the wedding! SUSPENSE!




.photos were taken fromvarious websites, my apologies for not listing proper credits. If this is your cake or work, please let me know.

.to do this weekend.

With my parents in town for the next eight days, I want to get wedding stuff done. The problem with that? I don’t know what to do! Seriously.
We finally set our venue walk-through appt. I could think of so many things that are more pleasant than trying to get an appt there, but I think that we now have an understanding. That takes place on Tuesday.

Tonite, we may pop in and see how the ceremony venue is coming along. Supposedly at Caesars, they are constructing a new garden….if not I’m more than happy with the “old” garden.

Tomorrow, MOB and I are getting our hairs did. Mine is just the maintenance trim. It’s been bothering me to not have fun, perky hair style for the next few months, but now that I have a dress…. The need to grow my hair super-crazy long isn’t such a must-have. MOB needs some updating to her hair and my hair stylist, Andeen, is so perfect. Plus, we can talk hair and hair pieces! YAY!

While they are in town, here is our tackle list:
-Update registry with mom- but the “hands-on” things like bedding and towels
-Decide on size of bottles for the favors
-Look through my binder and show MOB what’s been inspiring me
-Go to see both venues
-Hopefully hit Megabux
-Show FOB the tie that I’d like him to wear

That sounds like a pretty active list… in between, we will hope to hit Megabux.

.savor the countdown flavor.

Every day, Project Wedding sends me an email with a fabulous tip, read, discussion or all around good story. Today’s email brought on a whole new subject- 299 days to go. Last time I wrote about how many days left, we were at 366 and 365. That was a whopping 66 days ago. WOW! Time flies. We have broken the 300 day mark. Come Wednesday, we will have been engaged for six months. No matter how much I try to tell myself that “we have plenty of time, we are just under 10 months away!” I know that I am secretly kidding myself.

Flo and I met with our wedding planner yesterday, after about a 6 + week hiatus. Once we laid the structure for the event, there wasn’t much to cover until we hit the 10 month mark. Yesterday was quite productive- I updated him on my finds and some new ideas and we started talking timelines. This is when it hit me that it really is time to get a move on. Let’s pretty much consider it July. So we have July, August, September and October, four small months, until we hit the holidays. In all honesty, November and December aren’t going to be great planning months with all of the shopping to do, holiday parties, etc. While it may be a great time for me to finish any DIY Projects, it will be a rough time to nail down and details with vendors.

Then we welcome 2010 in January. We can celebrate our one year engagement anniversary and our birthdays. Yes, the both of us. Back to back. The 23rd and the 24th. Usually, I throw myself a rather large party to commemorate the day. Not in 2010, folks, sorry! In January is when the planning will pick back up full speed ahead! Tuxes, ice carvings, dance lessons, and honeymoon planning….

So on my birthday of January 24th, that will mark three months left. Less than 90 days (yay for February being short!). Essentially, then, that leaves with me with eight months to get effective planning complete. Stellar.

I have yet to break my tasks down by month but will shortly work on it. In the meantime, I am going to enjoy my laissez faire attitude for just a few more weeks and pretend that I have all the time in the world!

.checking things off of the list.

Whew! My, oh my…. Where have I been? Yikes! Well, I went on vacation, had my sister come out to visit me and just have not been able to catch up on blogging!

To update, my vacation was very productive, the following were accomplished:

1. My mother found an MOB dress, but just needs to order it. I wanted to go looking for dresses with her just to get an idea of what feels comfortable for her, what style looks good on her shape and what colors she likes. Well we more than accomplished that! Sweet… she lurves it, I lurve it and she is going to be one sassy MOB! No photos of this will post.

2. We found dresses for the Zillaz. Sort of. My sister, my niece and I trekked to several bridal stores in New Jersey. While Ster Zilla fed the lovely baby, I tried on the dresses! In all honesty… I think that I enjoy the dress shopping and trying experience so much that I offered to try them on! For S-Zilla and I to shop, we don’t mess around. In, put dress on, do you like –yes or no, circle one- ok, dress off and next. We fell in lurve with a matte jersey material from both Alfred Angelo and the Dessy Group. The matte jersey is light, flowy and comfy. So no fidgeting, no hugging or squeezing, these dresses should last comfortably all nite long! The Dessy dress is a wrap style that can be worn several ways. I like this idea the most because everyone can wear the dress in a style they like the most. For example, A-Zilla has awesome shoulders and upper body, so I pictured her wrapping to accentuate and I was right- she loves the one shoulder wrap. All we are doing is waiting for a sample to come into one store so that we can actually try that dress on and see how difficult (or easy, I hope) it is to wrap these dresses. I can only imagine us on the morning of trying to get this done and we end up Hollywood Taping everything together. Welcome to my world. The Zillaz lurved the dresses, too! That was most important. Wait, they said they lurved them…. Oh well. They truly can be re worn. The material can be dressed up for the wedding and worn with cute flats or strappy sandals and worn to brunch or church.

**NOTE: Another great wrap is is by twobirds bridesmaid...check it out. A little more expensive than the Dessy, but stunning.**

Dress by Alfred Angelo, Style 6588

Dress by The Dessy Group, Style Twist1

3. I bought a dress!!! YAYYYYYY! This is a HUGE relief. I haven’t quite yet posted all of dress debacle posts because I wasn’t sure how much attention I wanted to call to the negatives of dress shopping. Maybe I will forget all of that and just move forward. The dress is amazing, no, I won’t post photos. But it will knock your socks off! Now… I just have to get into a shape, something other than round. But don’t worry- I already started this process, I have a phone number to a trainer, who I will call while I gorge on Doritos. Ha-ha, take that healthy trainer lady! Just kidding…. My goal is to start a program around August or September. An actual training program, more than just my infrequent visits to the gym.

Here is a photo of a rejected dress... I have to be careful with what I post in case I change my mind! Ha!

4. We tasted our favors…. And sorry guests, there are none left for you! Just kidding. Spoiler Alert: I am going to talk about my wedding favors here. My dad makes wine as a hobby and it was only fitting to ask him to make wine for the wedding favors. He is making two flavors, which I will keep secret, and we were able to try one flavor and it was G-O-O-DDDDDDDD. YUM! I can’t wait for the guests to receive this favor and hopefully drink it. It is meaningful and made with love, for sure. We just need to commish Ellie Hey to do my labels. She has already agreed….so that part is checked off. We just need to come up with a design and a cute saying on the bottles so that everyone knows where they were made, etc. Any ideas? Please email them to me at TheNearlyweds@rocketmail.com

.ohhhh....what can it be hiding under than bag? the next step is to bottle and voila they are done.

.this is called a "wine thief" so that you can taste without contaminating the wine in progress.

.tasting the fruits of my dad's labor. yum is all i can say.

5. Save the Dates. Once again, the truly talented Ellie came through with a design that blew us away! I think that we went through only 3 revisions…but if you ask her, it was probably more like 33. Anyway, she sent us the approved design while we were in PA, sampling our favors. Blame it on the alcohol?? Anyway, they are two-sided, 5”x7” beauties. The personal information is blacked out, but this is what they look like:

They were printed on a glossy stock and we picked matching shadow grey envelopes. I am currently hand addressing them! UGH. My handwriting is mediocre, but I write faster than I think and have messed up three so far. Maybe the recipients of the STDs will become a shorter list and I continue writing. I can’t wait for them to be mailed, which means that I am finished with hand addressing envelopes.

**NOTE: We are only mailing to immediate family and far away friends (and bridal party!) so if you are a local friend…and don’t get one, you don’t necessarily have to be offended. We just speak to you on a regular basis and you know when the wedding will be and you should know if you will be invited or not!**

6. My insane checklist. I created a spreadsheet as my checklist. It is a crazillion tabs. Each tab is dedicated to a subject: Attire, Accessories, catering, Décor, DIY, Transportation, To Do, etc. It is helping to keep me organized, for now….

7. My binder. Is another out of control item. I am creating a secondary one for inspirational ideas since that is what is keeping my binder overflowing. And I guess that I can move the losing choices for a bridal gown and Zillaz dress to the older folder. I don’t want to get rid of anything because I think that in a few years I want to look back and see where my thoughts were and what I would have changed, etc.

So I leave you with this really long blog. We are just under 10 months now and the planning is going into full swing! We meet with our wedding planner today and I will be sure to blog again after that! Cheers!