24 Days!

Okay. Well, you're not gonna get a day-by-day update this time, because I've forgotten. But, we're almost there.

Sometime at the end of last week Nick messaged his aunt who had offered to make our cake and said we'd love to have her do it. We had debated a bit just because I feel like with weddings it's better not to hire family or friends for anything, but in the end I decided with a cake it shouldn't be a big deal. And she might do it a little cheaper, so that would be great. We're still hashing out all the details of that, but I think it's pretty much a done deal.

I guess we spent a couple nights last week trying to get my printer up and running so we could print envelopes for invitations. I didn't want to use labels because I guess it's considered "tacky" by some (and I guess I agree), but there was no way I was gonna sit there and handwrite 300 addresses (because my handwriting would look good on about the first three), so I wanted to print them. But my printer apparently decided to be lame and not work anymore. So Saturday we went to Provo to borrow Jeff's printer, and then had to go to Walmart twice for ink. Gah! But we finally got it up and running.

Sunday was spent printing and stuffing envelopes.

Monday was a good productive day. In the morning we went to the florist and ordered our flowers. Then we went a few places to look for suits for Nick, but we realized that he'll definitely have to go to a nice suit store to get what we want instead of just a department store at the mall. Which is fine, we just thought we'd take a look. Then we got all of the invitations ready to send. That was so exasperating. Just trying to figure out if we got everyone or not is so overwhelming! And then throw in trying to figure out exactly who to invite to the sealing...it's crazy. Oh, also we had a slight mishap ordering our sealing invitations, so we don't have those yet. But we got all of the other envelopes, sealed, stamped, and ready to go. The ones that need sealing invitations will go out by the end of the week, we hope.

Today we got a photographer! I had emailed a girl that I found on Facebook who I really liked on like Friday night, but had never heard back from her. So I messaged her again and it looks like it's a go! Yay!

Also, Nick's mom got the wedding luncheon/dinner booked and planned, so that's done too! Things are really coming together. It's getting stressful though. Or at least the past several days have been.

Now, on to the reception planning! We're just gonna do an ice cream sundae bar, so we're not gonna have caterers for that. Decorations and layout kind of stuff is the big thing.
I guess in addition to that, we've gotta both have our outfits and accessories for the day finalized. OH! Mom found some lace that almost perfectly matches my dress so she can make sleeves! I'm so excited about that!

Whew, busy busy. And Nick's moving on the 30th, so that's coming up quick. Things seem to be working really well though!

32 Days...

Well, silly me, thinking I'd have time to do this. Ha.

Let's see if I can do a rundown of everything that we've gotten done since the last update.

Friday, Jan 1: We took a break to pack and fly home.
Saturday, Jan 2: We got an early start and picked up our luggage from the airport that didn't make it on the flight with us the night before. Then we went and checked out the Chase Mill at Tracy Aviary and put down a deposit for the reception. After that we spent the afternoon apartment hunting and found one that we really liked. That took several days to get the application and everything done, but the deposit is down and Nick moves in on the 30th.
Sunday, Jan 3: Hmm...I don't remember that far back. I'm sure we discussed different things.
Monday, Jan 4: Got our engagements back from the wonderful Whitney Gossling. There are some of them that I absolutely love! She did great.
Tuesday, Jan 5: I was researching invitation stuff and saw a 50% off sale going on for Shutterfly, but it was ending the next day! We starting looking and putting that together.
Wednesday, Jan 6: We spent lots of time on the phone nailing down our parents on open house dates, locations, times, etc. (which apparently we still didn't get one of them scheduled as desired), as well as proofing our invitation. We were up till 1 am working on it, but but got our 50% off, AND we got 200 out of our 300 pictures for FREE! (We're keeping it classy and doing a separate picture and invitation.) Oh, and we also had our first interview with our bishop that night.
Thursday, Jan 7: I don't remember...
Friday, Jan 8: Researched suits for Nick. We decided brown or tan.
Saturday, Jan 9: Got the honeymoon booked! Nick did all the researching for this one (he's so great...I don't have the patience for that like he does). We're going on a cruise to the Bahamas. I wish it was tomorrow, I'm so sick of the cold.
Sunday, Jan 10: Took a break so I could catch up on grading that I had neglected that week.
Monday, Jan 11: Our invitations came! Now just waiting on our pictures, which will hopefully be later this week.
Tuesday, Jan 12 (TODAY): We took a break and went to see Star Wars. For the fourth time. Yep. I love it.

So, there's the low down. The next big things are: photographer, cake, florist. I'm hoping to get all of those figured out in the next week. Then we can move onto getting the reception planned and outfits finalized for bride and groom.

So exciting. So exhausting.

But, mostly exciting.

43 Days to Go

Today was less stressful and more productive. We got our engagements done, which is a huge stress relief. I was not looking forward to going back to Salt Lake, researching photographers, trying to find one I liked who could do our pictures asap at a reasonable price, etc. So we went out to get our pictures done, and at first we were like sweet, it's nice and cloudy and not raining! (It's rained like 10 of the 11 days we've been here.) And then we got there, and it was raining. Thankfully Whitney was super flexible and was like, "It shouldn't last much longer, we can just hang out until it stops." So thankfully it cleared up and we were able to get that done. That's a HUGE relief. And hopefully they turn out well. Everybody raves about Whitney's work and what I've seen is great, so I have no doubt we'll have some great ones.

The other big thing today was I got my dress! It's so funny how you can say something all your life, like, "I'll never spend a bunch of money on a wedding dress. It's so stupid to spend hundreds of dollars on a dress you wear once, and I won't do it!" Ha. Ha. Ha. I will say I didn't spend a super crazy amount, but it was definitely more than I ever thought I would. But, it's gorgeous and I love it. Now I just need to figure out shoes and accessories. And a veil? Not sure about that either. But it's another big relief to have that taken care of.

Nick tried calling some venues today, but since it's New Years Eve it was difficult. He wasn't able to get ahold of the Aviary, but he did talk to someone about the Murray Chapel, which is another cute option. We'll have to worry about venue on either Saturday or Monday now since businesses are all closed for New Years.

We did start to research stuff for the Honeymoon though. Our idea is to go somewhere out east and then plan the Atlanta open house for before we head back home. So we've narrowed it down to either a cruise to the Bahamas, or Universal Studios (aka Harry Potter World). Still gotta think a bit more on that one. But we'll probably get that booked this weekend so we can get other plans in motion too.

I think the next big thing to start researching is invitations so we can get that going asap so we can send them out in time. We've gotta know the venue before we can do that for sure though. And open house times. Seriously, planning a wedding is just like trying to teach 6th graders pre-algebra. There really is no good starting place or order to go because everything relies on something else. It's not like a nice pyramid where everything builds off something else...it's all jumbled together and you really can't pick one place to start without it affecting 5 other things. It's going to be interesting to see how things go once we're back home and in real life again...tomorrow.

44 Days to Go

Today was a bit more stressful than it needed to be. In the morning I went with my mom to the fabric store to check in to the possibility of making my wedding dress. I had really loved one that I had tried on the day before, but my mom didn't really like that it was ivory, and I wished that it wasn't short sleeves. I would really prefer a three-quarter sleeve. But we went to the fabric store and I realized that they weren't really going to have fabric that I was going to love. And it was something that would probably stress out my mother. And probably me too. So I pretty much made the decision yesterday to just go with the dress at the shop.

The next big hurdle was getting ready for engagement pictures. Last night we went to a hockey game with a group from church, and I had sort of joked/seriously suggested that we talk to Whitney and see if she would do our pictures for us before we leave. She's a pretty highly esteemed photographer in the area among people at church and her husband is an old friend. Thankfully my mom actually did ask if she would be available and she said she's check her schedule and shoot me an email. So yesterday she contacted me and said that she would do our engagements Thursday morning. That should have been a huge relief, except that we have a very limited wardrobe here right now. My mom told us to just go to the store and buy new clothes if we wanted, but neither of us really need or want new clothes right now. But after a good nap and a fresh mind, we were able to figure out our outfits for the photoshoot. Nick continued to search for different venues a bit and actually found a couple promising ones. The old mill at Tracy Aviary and also a barn in Draper. We'll see.

And so it goes...hopefully the stress will be less and less as we get things planned and set in stone.

How I Planned My Wedding in Less Than Two Months

Wow. I really dropped the ball on this blog over the past year and a half. And that's too bad, because it would have been a great time to be documenting here for the nonexistent reader (besides my future self...because I ridiculously and slightly embarrassingly love reading my old blog posts). There were some horrible times (pretty much my entire second year of teaching) and some amazing times (meeting, dating, and falling in love with one of the greatest men I've ever known), and all the in between (my thoughts and commentaries on the random things in life).

Let's do a quick catch up. Well, not much to say about teaching last year, except that it was hard. I had a really tough class, and there wasn't much good to talk about from the year, except when it was over. We switched over from year-round to traditional schedule and had to move out to portables, so that was all kind of a bummer. We went from 4 classes to 3 classes, which meant we each have almost 30 kids in our classes. It's be a rough first half of the year. I do have amazing kids who I really like, but that doesn't mean it's not hard every single day. I also love my teammates, Megan and Allison. We are all very much on the same page about pretty much everything and work really well together. That is one advantage that has come from traditional schedule: collaboration. That was hard on year-round. But anyways, enough about work. That isn't the purpose of this post.

Something much more exciting is the purpose of this post. It has to do with Nicholas Lawrence. We met July 2014. First date was September 1, 2014. First kiss was January 19, 2015. He proposed December 25, 2015. We're getting married February 13, 2016.

Nope, not a typo. We're planning a 7 week engagement. Everyone's eyes get a little wider and their jaw drops a bit when they hear that, but when you've been dating someone for as long as we have, talking about the possibility of marriage for at least 6 months, you're ready to get married, asap. And when you've got a couple of older (at least comparatively in the Mormon world), more reasonable and frugal young adults like us, you don't need that much time to plan the kind of wedding we want. Something simple, smallish, and chill. So 7 weeks seems like a great amount of time. Especially when we can get stuff done right now while on break.

So my idea for blogging again is to not only document this journey, but also see if I can relieve a bit of stress in my life. We'll see how it works. But I want to do one of my mini-series, like I've done in the past. This one is going to be: How I Planned My Wedding in Less Than Two Months. And sticking with tradition, I'm starting it at about 3 in the morning, because once again while staying in my bedroom at home I've become an insomniac and couldn't sleep. So, a quick outline of what's happened the past few days. I know it doesn't look like a lot, but it's felt like quite a bit.

Dec 25th: Talked about date possibilities. Looked online at apartments.
Dec 26th: Talked more about date possibilities. Looked online at options for dressing up a cultural hall.
Dec 27th: Weighed the options for a date. Searched for reception venues.
Dec 28th: Went to Target and Kohl's to start our registry. It was exhausting. More online searching for reception venues.
Dec 29th: Scheduled Feb 13, 2016 at 1:00 pm with the Mt. Timpanogos Temple. Dress shopping with Mom. Found 2 dresses, one that I loved, one that I really liked. Also led to the possibility of Mom making a dress like the one I loved. We're going to check out fabric tomorrow and weigh the cost. I want to make the decision tomorrow. Nick continued to look at venues online. (Finding a venue to meet our needs and budget has been frustratingly difficult. I'll get into that more later.)

Well, I think sleep has finally found me and is tugging me back onto my pillow, so that's all for now. We'll see how this mini-series actually goes. I promise I'll try to make it more entertaining than just a running list of what I do every day. And I'll try to add some fun stories about Nick and me and our relationship. Happy 45 more days!