The Invitations

We have finally started working on our invitations! 173 days to go and real, tangible wedding things are starting to happen!

We bought our invitations IONS ago. We found them randomly chilling in a clearance aisle at a Michael's craft store. This aisle had dozens of boxes of random invitations and other miscellaneous items that were so thrown about it looked like a tornado had blown it's way through.  We spent at least half an hour digging through the piles, hoping to find enough boxes that matched in a design that we liked for our invitations. Luckily for us, we were able to scrape enough of them together! We walked out of the store with all of our invitations for $45. The only thing left would be to print our information on them.

Special shout out to my office, the Sexual Assault Resource Agency (SARA). While cleaning out basement storage, I found an old printer that had been sitting there for who knows how long (and not even sure if it actually worked). I asked if I could borrow the printer for our invitations, and they were generous enough to allow me to do so. With some tinkering and searching for the right number ink cartridge, Emily and I were able to get the printer to work! We settled on final layout and wording for our invitations and we are all ready to get them printed.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Y'all. Life has been so crazy. Emily and I keep having these moments where we have a chance to pause and we reflect on the fact that we have no idea where the time is going. It keeps passing and we don't even realize whats happening. I realize that I've been relatively absent on my blogging journey...the good news is that you haven't missed much. Until very recently, we haven't been doing much wedding work.

Today I thought that I'd share a bit of an update regarding our venue. It has been an interesting journey, to say the least!

Shortly after we were engaged in August 2016, we took a trip back to the Midwest for a wedding. While were there, we took the opportunity to browse around the area for some potential wedding venues. We visited 2 that were near my hometown in Illinois. After totally hating the first, we fell absolutely in love with the second. Emily even had a made-for-TLC moment and cried with overflowing emotion on the spot where our ceremony would be taking place. It was SO affordable, quaint, and fit perfectly with the motif that was guiding our wedding vision. We left there by putting a hold for our date with a promise from the venue owner/manager that we would focus on a contract at a later time (since we were more than 2 years away from our actual wedding date). We left there feeling great about our venue. It was a perfect fit. There were only a couple things about it that we weren't crazy about, but they certainly weren't deal breakers.

Fast forward several months, and we reached out to the owner/manager asking about a contract so we could sign and start making payments. We received a new version of the contract that we had browsed during our initial visit, but the price had gone up and what was included was a bit different than what was initially offered.  We had another visit to the Midwest planned for a few months later, so we scheduled a time to meet at the venue to officially sign everything. At the time, my mom was the only one of our parents to have seen the venue, so we also invited the rest of our parents to join us for a tour and dinner.  We all met up, and everyone fell in love with it as much as we had. It was still almost-as-perfect as it had been the first time we saw it.

The owner was out of town, but another manager planned to help us out in signing the contract. We explained the confusing difference in the two contracts that we had seen after she handed us a third version that was even more different and expensive. She said she would check with the owner when she returned. We signed a TBD contract and left without paying anything.

After much deliberation and some conversation about other options, Emily and I decided that the original venue no longer matched what we wanted or needed. It was going to be significantly out of our price range if we were not offered the original price we fell in love with, and those things we weren't crazy about were slowly becoming deal breakers. We decided that since we still had not officially booked the venue, that we would back out.

We then moved to a camp in my hometown. It was much more affordable and had a lot of bare bones with the freedom to create it was we wanted. It wasn't as perfect as the original venue, but it would do. Plus, because it was a summer camp, it had cabins that we planned to rent out for guests who wanted to stay on property with us. It was available for our date and the price was right, so we put our names down for the weekend.

We sent our save the dates out with our wedding website all set up with information about Oregon, IL. Two days later, a series of unfortunate events that were completely out of our control, that venue was no longer going to work.

Panic mode ensues.

We were now less than a year out from our wedding date and suddenly had no venue. We started calling any and every venue between Milwaukee and Oregon and nothing was available in our budget for October 13. October is apparently the new June when it comes to wedding dates, so the prime time Saturday we had been planning on for 2+ years was also booked well in advance for other couples.

Thankfully we were able to find a beautiful venue with the right price that was available the next morning. It seemed to have all worked out the way it was supposed to, because a morning/brunch wedding was so much more us than a traditional evening ceremony anyway.

SO. If you received a Save-The-Date from us, this is your official pre-invitation alert that our date is now Sunday, October 14, 2018.  Invitations will be making their way to you shortly.

Our new (and official all paid for) wedding venue is the South Shore Pavilion in Milwaukee, WI. It's a beautiful pavilion right on lake with huge windows and the freedom to essentially do whatever we want. And, special thanks to Emily's mom and her neighbors, we have some great photos they took while another couple was setting up for their wedding. We can't wait to turn it into the space of our dreams and share a special morning with our loved ones.

The Main Entrance to the Pavilion

The "cocktail hour"/kitchen area

The main hall

A Very Ambitious Project

It's been such a long time since I've posted. It's been one of those times when so much has been happening, I didn't even know where to begin. So I decided to start with a fun one!

Last Christmas, we asked our the members of our wedding parties to join us on our big day. We had asked everyone but our "Ring Bearer" and "Flower Girl" (our niece and nephew) because we were waiting until it got closer. They are young children, after all. So this Christmas, we decided it would be the perfect time to ask them and also give them a special something in order to do so.  Naturally, this became way more of a project than I expected it to be.

I had this idea to give them personalized picture books. I always think the ones they make for babies (where they insert the name into a pre-written story) are such a cute sentiment. But, they're still a little too impersonal and are also expensive. We are operating on a TINY budget, so I decided to get creative; I decided to just make them myself.

I ordered blank books off of Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B1Z5508/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and downloaded a bunch of images to try and recreate. I also got a great deal on some fun water color colored pencils, which is a new medium for me that I am now in love with.  I decided that Cooper's would be Star Wars themed and Stella's would be Moana themed (some of their favorite things). I also paired them each with a cuddle item so they could curl up and read. We found a great Star Wars blanket for Cooper that we put his name on, and Stella got a stuffed Pua.

Each book took me about 5 evenings to complete. The kids loved them, and I'm so glad I could give them something special that they can hang on to forever.  Here are some photos of each book...sorry they're sideways.  Enjoy!

Stella "reading" her book.

Emily reading to Cooper.

Front cover of Cooper's book

Dedication page.

Front cover of Stella's book

Dedication Page

I do not own any of the art that these images are based on. 

A Literary Review

It is amazing how many books there are for weddings. Our tiny library has two entire shelves of wedding books, which doesn't even scratch the surface of what Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Google have to offer. When we started our wedding planning process, we knew that we would be doing everything ourselves. That meant no wedding planner. And, since we aren't religious people, it also meant that we wanted to explore a little DIY pre-marital counseling as well.

The books out there are plentiful, but you would be surprised at how many didn't actually meet our needs. Most of what we found were heavily religious, extremely heteronormative, and too "basic" for our style. But we did manage to find a few diamonds in the rough.  Below is a review of the books we've found, what we've used them for, and what we loved and didn't love about them.  I've also given each book a score out of 10, where 1 is the worst and 10 is the best.

The Wedding Ceremony Planner: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Part of Your Wedding Day
Reverend Judity Johnson, Ph.D.

What We Love: This book is great! It has endless options for how to organize and word your ceremony. This is perfect for us because we are having a dear friend officiate, so it's helpful to write the script for someone who hasn't done it before. It includes traditional church ceremonies as well as super unique secular ceremonies. It has each section of the ceremony broken down and provides tips to personalize them for your needs.  The best part is that the book includes access to downloadable PDFs of their scripts.

What We Didn't Love: It is VERY heternormative. In the introduction, the author mentioned that they tried to be inclusive, but no where did we actually see those efforts. Everything was "Bride" and "Groom."

Overall, we would rate this book an 8/10. It was really helpful and we were able to create a script that is perfect for our ceremony.  

Our Q&A a Day: 365 Questions, 3 Years, 2100 Shared Answers. 3-Year Journal for 2 People

What We Love: We haven't actually started this book yet. We're waiting to start it on October 13, so we can capture the year leading up to our marriage and our first 2 years of marriage on the exact date.  I have previously used a one-sentence a day journal for myself, so when I found this one I got really excited. I love the guided question format of it, and that it asks you the same questions on the same day for 3 years. I'm excited to use this and see how our answers change and develop with each other over time.

What We Don't Love: Some of the questions are kind of weird. And also, we're not always the best at remembering to do things like this at the end of the day. I suppose it will require us to practice our end-of-the-day reflection and mindfulness!

I can't score this one fairly because we haven't actually put it to the test. 

52 E-mails to Transform Your Marriage: How to Reignite Intimacy and Rebuild Your Relationship
Samantha Rodman, Ph.D.

What We Love: This book is great because it's so unique! I love the modern twist it has to communicating with your partner. It acknowledges that sometimes talking about tough subjects is hard, and helps guide you through processing how to talk about them.  It includes conversation starters about all aspects of a relationship, and includes questions and examples to walk you through your thought process. It also asks you to start each "email" with "Talking to you about this subject makes me feel...", so you can acknowledge your vulnerability from the get go. I appreciate that it encourages emotional intelligence and wellness, and makes those emotions ok. Instead of emailing, we decided to journal our notes. We try to spend a little time each week writing our letters to each other in the journal, and then we trade and write a response. After we finish writing, we talk about it. It's cool because the prompts include questions to ask of your partner so they have a way to keep the conversation going.  We opted to journal because it's more intimate and we can do it together, as well as keep everything in one place. We also appreciate that it's 52 prompts, which gives us one prompt a week. We try to make it our Sunday night ritual. This book is also great because it uses inclusive language and is designed for use in a variety of stages of life. It's called "rebuilding your relationship," but it talks about people getting ready to be newly wed and well as people who have lost their way a bit after being married for a while. We're planning on using it now and also revisiting it down the road.

What We Didn't Love: We are bad at keeping up with it, which is on us but not the book. There's not much we don't like about it.

Overall, we would give this book a 10/10! We love it. It's a great find, and it's been a really great way to connect with each other. 

1001 Questions to Ask Before You Get Married
Monica Mendez Leahy

What We Love: It covers anything you could ever imagine needing to have a conversation about. It's broken down into sections and chapters, and it covers all the bases. I appreciate that it helps guide conversation through some things we never would have thought to talk about. It's also nice because it gives you the questions in a variety of ways. Some are just traditional lists of questions to go through, while some are worksheets that you fill out separately and then come back together to talk about.

What We Don't Love: It is A LOT of questions. It's a bit exhausting to get through them. Some we were able to skip because they were conversations we've had before, but it's almost excessively thorough.

Overall, we would give this book a 9. It gives you new ideas of what to talk about, and provides opportunities for self-exploration as well as relationship exploration. 

Instant Wedding Planner: Get From "Will You?" To "I Do" In Record Time
Jennifer L. Shawne

What We Love: It's a planning binder, so it includes lots of checklists and tips for getting things accomplished. We got this one by accident, because we didn't realize it was an "instant" planner, meaning it helps you plan a wedding if you have a timeline of a few months. Even though that is not the case with us, it was still helpful in providing a different perspective of all the things you need to plan a wedding. It's also super helpful in helping you prioritize things. It helps you outline the bare-bones of a wedding.

What We Don't Love: It's not something we needed. It's a great book, especially if you have a quick turnaround.  It could be improved in the budget breaking-down section.

Overall, this one gets a 10. It's so helpful! And it was very inexpensive. 

The Knot Ultimate Wedding Planner and Organizer

What We Love: This book has EVERYTHING you need to plan a wedding. It includes check lists, ways to imagine your wedding before you even get to the actual planning stages, as well as helpful reminders and questions for venues and service providers. It's also neat because it's in a 3-ring binder, so we were able to reorganize and take out the sections that we didn't want or need. It's great because it helps you think of everything and leaves no stone unturned. It has worksheets for everything from service providers to color schemes, and even has business card holders.

What We Didn't Love: There weren't enough worksheets for interviewing service providers. It advises you to make copies if you need more, which we did, but for the price it would have been nice to have those included. It was also pricey. It includes a lot and is certainly cheaper than a human wedding planner, but we would have liked to pay less for it. It could also use more pockets for collecting handouts and brochures from providers.

Overall, we would give this an 8/10. It's great and has been helpful, but it's far from perfect. 

Emotional Fitness For Couples: 10 Minuets a Day to a Better Relationship
Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D.

What We Love: This is like a non-religious devotional. It makes checking in and keeping up with each other realistic. It's simple and short for daily things, so it doesn't feel like an exhausting undertaking. We haven't really done a lot with this one, but it seems like a helpful book.

What We Don't Love: We didn't find it to be guided enough. Which is fine for some, but we were using it for a pre-marital counseling kind of thing, and it wasn't necessarily good for that.

We can fairly score this one as we haven't used it enough.

Overall, these were the books we found that met our needs the most. There are a lot more than this, but this is just what we've collected so far. A lot of these books are nice because they can be used now as well as down the road. We're excited to have them along for the journey!

If you know of any other books that you think we should check out, we'd love to hear about them!

Adventures in Wedding Crafting: The Card Box

Besides Emily, two of the things I love most in this world are Disney and crafting.  Weddings are the most perfect vehicle for taking advantage of these.  So naturally, when we started throwing out ideas for our wedding, Disney and DIY crafts came up. I could put Disney into literally every piece of our wedding, but Emily had to slow me down and put some restrictions on my Disnerding. (Rest assured, there will be plenty of opportunities for our guests to seek Hidden Mickeys and other secret Disney touches on the day of.)

The subject of today's installment of our journey is one of our Disney crafts. While it may be overdone and somewhat expected, I've been counting on this since the first time I saw the film UP. Cliche or not, I'm so excited about it. 

Hopefully you'll all be familiar with this scene, a beautiful moment between the film's couple.  This is the inspiration for our mailbox. 

Courtesy of Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Pictures

We started with a trip to Lowe's to get the mailbox.  As luck would have it, we found a gray box (perfect for our color scheme) that was on sale! Fate. 

Yes, I'm wearing shorts. 

The plan was to add our hand prints and names, just like in the movie. Emily had the fantastic idea of adding Lavender's paw print as well.  Thankfully, Lavender is the most easy-going, chill dog on the planet, so we figured we'd catch her while she was lounging on her bed (which she does 80% of the time).

Blinkey-eyed and freshly woken-up from a nap.

She didn't really seem to mind; she allowed us to maneuver her around and play with her feet. The only thing she wasn't exactly thrilled by was the paint on her toes...she hates it when her feet are wet. Thankfully she still tolerated us and only tried to wiggle free a couple of times.

Her face says "I'm not sure what you're doing but I'm not a fan." She gives me this look a lot. 

Giving in. 

The perfect made-with-a-little-too-much-paint paw print. 

I'm so thrilled with how cute it turned out...it's PERFECT and exactly what we were going for.  I'm so excited to share it with all of you in October 2018. 

I should note, we managed to not get any of turquoise paint on the beige carpet! We had a bit of a scare with some turquoise paint-water right after we washed her paw, but thankfully it came out easily. 

The finished product

Emily managing to get paint all over her face.

Displeased with her involvement in the wacky ideas of Moms.