3 Months to Go

(Well... technically not until Friday, but I'm ahead of my game!)

Each month seems to pass more and more quickly. I can't believe we only have 3 months until the wedding! Let's get right to the update...

Past Month Goals:

1) Have our invitations completely designed and printed. Begin assembly. Check! Check! Check! Not only did we begin assembly, but we completely finished it as of Tuesday night, and our invitations are arriving in our guests' mailboxes as we speak!

2) Hire a sound engineer for our wedding ceremony. A big fat X for this one... but mostly because we decided we don't really need him. The audio for our ceremony should be pretty basic, and we'll have a videographer to catch it all on film (whereas the sound engineer would provide us with an audio CD).

3) Ask our ushers to be ushers. Check! Ryan asked his cousin, and I asked my brother. I heard through the grapevine that my brother's girlfriend's response was, "your sister asked you to be in her wedding via email?! You guys have a weird relationship." Yes. Yes, we do.

4) Notify the people we would like to give toasts during the reception. Hmm... not really. I think they already know, but I should probably give them all a formal heads-up.

5) Schedule my wedding dress fitting. Woops! No, again. We decided to wait off on this since I'm losing weight at such a rapid pace.

6) Book a limo. Check! Just did this one last weekend. We'll be riding in style in a 14 passenger Escalade from American Coach Limo.


7) Choose what Ryan and his groomsmen will wear. We sort of did this. Details to come after this weekend.

That list makes me feel like a slacker. I guess the amount of time we put into the Invitations overshadowed all the other wedding projects.

Other Accomplishments:

• I purchased / DIYed some shower hostess gifts.
• We booked a hotel for the Sunday night after our wedding (we need to be near the airport for our 8am flight to Cancun!).
• We chose our first dance song.
• We bought and designed placecards.
• I made a card box.
• I purchased earrings.
• We bought wine to go in our wine box.
• I bought three (very different) dresses to wear to my bridal shower.

Source

Source

Not this exact dress, but something similar.

See! We're not that big of slackers! I'm pretty proud of all the stuff we got done in the past month. It took a pretty major chunk off our To Do list.

Goals for the Upcoming Month:

• Purchase and create table numbers.
  
• Schedule dance lessons.
• Schedule dress fittings. (Seriously!)
• Plan our ceremony.
• Decide on aisle decor.
• Print family wedding photos and frame them.

I just breathed a huge sigh of relief because that list right there is totally doable. I'm just so thrilled to be done with our invitations (A few coworkers received theirs today, and gushed about how cute they were!).

Ryan and I will be heading to Illinois this weekend. Ryan's mom, aunt, sister, and niece are all coming into town, and will be staying with us at my parents' house. It should be fun... and busy!

Friday: Ryan meets my maternal grandparents and dinner at our rehearsal dinner location.
Saturday: Marriage counseling in the morning and bridal shower in the afternoon.
Sunday: Meeting with our reception venue to discuss details.

Yay!

5 Months To Go

Today is our 5-month mark.

I was about to say that it's all downhill from here... but that's really not true. If anything, it's all uphill from here. Now is when the real work begins.


We've got all of the big vendors booked and out of the way... but now we have to crack open our DIY list and start on all the paper products and little planning details.

To add to the stress, nothing's worse than the steady stream of wedding nightmares I've been having recently. It happens about once a week, and in my dream, it is always the day before the wedding, when I suddenly realize I have nothing done.

During last night's episode, I made it all the way to the wedding day, and still managed to be excited despite the train wreck that lay before me. But when my flowers arrived dead, I nearly lost it.

::cold sweats::


Nothing like a swift kick in the butt.

So from here on out... on each month mark, I will list what we've gotten done in the past month, and what I vow to tackle in the month ahead.

Here we go!

Past Month Accomplishments:

1) We officially decided on our rehearsal dinner location. We're going with Distinctive Cork that I mentioned a little while back. We're excited, the owner is excited. It's all good. Now to start working on the menu!

2) Ryan and I sent out a request for family wedding photos. We're going to have a display at our reception with wedding photos of our parents and our grandparents. They're all still together, so what better example for us of what a good marriage is?

3) Ryan applied for his passport. We're going to Mexico!


4) My mom gave me the date of my bridal shower! I had to come up with a guest list. Choosing who should or shouldn't come? That's not stressful at all (oozing sarcasm). But it'll all be worth it when I get to go to a party that's all about me! (Although, Ryan says its partially about him too. Yeah, yeah... I guess so.)

5) I've scheduled our next meeting with the reception venue. We'll get to choose our cake, discuss all the nitty-gritty details, and work on the timeline some more.

6) We chose our ceremony readers, asked them, and they accepted. Yay! We will have my older cousin, Alaina, and one of my college roommates, Mel, reading at our ceremony. I'm thinking we'll probably do one reading from the bible, and one secular reading... but we'll see!

7) And lastly... we finally decided on our invitation! I'm not going to tell you which design won out... you'll just have to wait and see. But I'm really happy with how it's progressing. I just wish this whole process didn't take so long!

Goals for the Upcoming Month:

• Schedule our marriage counseling session
  
• Completely design our invitation suite, order all the paper and supplies, and begin printing
  
• Book the flight, hotel, and transportation for our wonderful videographer
• Get all three bridesmaids to order their dresses

Obviously, the biggest task ahead of us is the invitation suite.


I would like to have them out the door no later than March 25th so that our guests will have plenty of time (3 months) to make plans, hotel reservations, etc... and so that we'll have plenty of time to fill in the holes of our 200-person guest list.

Staying Organized and Keeping My Sanity

A coworker asked me this afternoon how the wedding planning was going.

That's a pretty dangerous question, and I usually try to answer with something simple and nondescript like "good"... mainly because I don't want to bore people with all the details

But this coworker of mine recently got engaged... so she knows the deal.

I told her we had all our big stuff done and out of the way, and now I'm just procrastinating starting all the little details.

She responded, "Yeah... we're still working on all the 'big stuff'. I don't know about you... but this wedding planning stuff is stressful!"

Source

I nodded politely and mumbled something resembling a "yeah".

Why the cold shoulder? Mainly because I don't agree. I haven't felt any real wedding-related stress since this whole process started 7+ months ago. I've actually had a really good time with the whole thing.

Luck? Perhaps. But more likely it's my obsessive organization.

I've got a massive always-changing Excel spreadsheet. I keep it on a small flashdrive, and bring it with me everywhere. It has a bunch of different tabs where I keep all our important information, links, ideas, etc...

Expenses:

*Click any photo to enlarge*

Appointments and To Do:


Guests:


Budget:


Wedding Day Timeline:


Gift Registries:


What can I say? I love lists!

Every time I'm trying to decide between vendors, I add another tab to my spreadsheet where I can compare the costs, inclusions, and pros and cons of each different company.

I bought a nice wedding planning binder when we first got engaged, but I haven't used it much. First of all, it's huge... and second, my Excel sheet is just way easier. The binder is handy for keeping track of all of our information packets and contracts, though.

If you could use a little organization infusion, you can download a blank version of my magical wedding spreadsheet by clicking here! (Yeah... I'm just that nice.)

What are you doing to stay organized?