Love. Live. Laugh. Wed.

I've changed the "Buff Bride" tab on the navigation bar to a new "Downloads" tab! It's all set up and live so you can go ahead and click on it.

Or at least - now it will be because we've chosen our officiant!

It was such a weight off of my shoulders to get this crossed off our to-do list. Now I know that no matter how things go on July 9th, and whether I get all of my overly-abitious DIY projects done or not, we'll be married. This is also a big deal for us because the details of our ceremony (which have yet to be completely hashed out) were creating a bit of friction between myself, my dear fiance, the future in-laws and my parents. It mostly came down to a "Catholic church ceremony" vs "an outdoor Justice of the Peace ceremony".

I'm that bride, that carries around a giant planning binder. Make fun of me all you want - I love that thing!

I'm sure you are all well aware of this, but when you're planning a wedding, the amount of inspiration out there can be down-right overwhelming. Every single wedding is different and therefore they each lend their own inspiration to what a wedding can be.

When I was first planning and brainstorming, this was awesome! All of the pictures, diy tutorials, blogs, the ideas! But now that we are less than eight months out from the actual wedding day, I realized that I really need to pare down all of that inspiration to just the ideas that I plan on or really might still use. I have a wedding folder on my desktop that contains pretty much all of my wedding related stuff, but I wanted something different to organize all of this inspiration and to help me remember what I wanted to do for specific things.

Happy One-Day-Shy-Of-One-Month-Without-A-Single-Freaking-Post!!!

I've been working on our save the dates (that were supposed to go out last month) and let me tell you, it is not going well. They are a mini-fail in larger fail that is my life right now. I really wanted my next couple of posts to touch on revealing my design, posting a tutorial for how I did them, and actually sending them out. But I can't freaking finish them!

In other fail news. We've barely spent any money on this wedding yet and I've already failed at keeping track of our budget. I got a bunch of stuff for our save the dates and never put half of it in there. So now I have to go back and add everything up again to get a real total. I just can't believe that it's like the third or fourth thing we've bought for this wedding and I'm already losing track.

However, for some delightfully awesome news, we are going on a weekend getaway this weekend and I'm so excited. We're going to Cleveland for the weekend and seeing the Jets crush the Browns on Sunday! No, Cleveland is not the most romantic of getaway spots, but it really doesn't matter to me where we're going. Just that it will be the two of us getting away for a few days and getting to spend time with each other. And that's two days that I don't have to spend trying to recover the mess that I call our save the dates!!

I'm doing wedding stuff most of the day. If I'm not trying to directly cross of to-do list items, I'm doing "research" and reading blogs and bios to get inspiration. I'm doing this all.the.time. What's Sean doing while I'm immersed in my wedding world? Usually watching baseball, or football, or making calculated changes to any one of the number of fantasy sports teams he has, or he's adding to his massive collection of autographed sports stuff.

I really don't want to be bothering him all the time, showing him this awesome blog post from so-and-so or showing him every inspiration picture I save to my computer or bookmark for the future. But I realized recently that in my trying not to overwhelm him and bother him, I've been leaving him out.

*All images from TheKnot.com

I've been itching to officially ask my bridal party since the day we got engaged. I asked my sister and future sister-in-law over the Winter because I kept getting questions about whether they were going to be in the bridal party and I knew 100% for sure they were, so I just asked.

I know etiquette wise you're supposed to ask everyone at the same time so no one feels like they're the last kid getting picked to play dodge ball but, what can I say? I really wanted to wait until we were closer to the wedding and had actually set a date and venue before I went on inviting people to be in the bridal party. By the time we actually settled on a date I was beyond ready to ask my ladies. I had already designed their cards weeks earlier and I was just waiting to put them together.

Now of course I'm a terrible blogger and never took a picture of the finished card. Can you believe that? I made six of them and never took a picture of a single one. Fail. Oh well, I made you this nice little illustration to give you an idea of what they looked like.

This might be boring to some people but I'm a big list maker and this wedding has me making a ton of to-do lists. I have a big planning binder and a few master lists that I'll show in another post, but another thing I do is make a to-do list every month. I feel like looking at those big long wedding checklists on TheKnot or any other wedding site, tend to be intimidating.

That's the sound you would have heard if you were in our apartment last week while we made some minor adjustments to our budget.

We finally picked a reception venue! That means we now have a reception venue, a caterer, a date  and even a possible ceremony venue!

I cannot even express to you how excited I am about this!

I'm sure most of you are going to skip the previous long and wordy post leading up to this one and I gotta say, I don't blame you. But, I felt like it needed to be said, and it's important stuff! Now we'll get to the good parts (and the pictures!)

You guys are lucky you're hearing this because I don't think I've ever told anyone the entire story truthfully. Now, before you go thinking I'm a compulsive liar or something, I have a few reasons. You'll see.

or as I'd rather title this "You have got to be kidding me!!"

A few weeks ago I was chatting on the Weddingbee boards with local NY brides about their wedding locations and my venue searching woes. One nice Rochestarian mentioned that she was getting married at the White House in Webster Park. Intrigued, I looked it up. It turned out to be a gorgeous (white) house on a bluff overlooking the lake with tons of trees and gorgeous scenery. My first thought? "ohmygosh I love it!"

So I know I haven't been around much lately, but life has been crazy. Normally I would post that crazy stuff but it's nothing I haven't posted about before (job hunting, deciding where to live, trying to find a freaking venue) and I really don't want to bore you with all of that. So until I get some new news, I'm staying quiet.

Well, after this post.

Have ya'll heard of Weddingbee? I'm pretty sure all of my readers (all two of you) found me from weddingbee but just in case you haven't heard of it, let me tell you a little bit. When I first started getting interested in wedding planning (which I will shamefully admit was much before our engagement) I found TheKnot. Now, I'm not here to poopoo all over TheKnot. The actual informational section of the website is pretty good. I love to go there for inspiration pictures and articles, and their tools are pretty useful as well. However, if you mosey on over to the boards, it's a different story. Some of the local boards are pretty nice, but the main boards can get really really nasty. And I just can't stand that crap. I mean really ladies, we're adults, must we act like it's 9th grade all over again?!

Anyway, back to Weddingbee. Eventually I found the site through some googling and it was like I found the fountain of youth! There are so many inspiring bee bloggers and they are all so down to earth! There are some bees I follow because their wedding ideas are similar to mine, some I follow because they always have great relationship advice, some I follow just because their posts are hilarious and fun to read. And the boards! If you post a question on the boards, 99% of the time, someone will answer it for you or at least try to help you. Even if that question has been asked 989,583 times before. The ladies on that board are incredibly kind and helpful.

So, the ladies on the Upstate NY board are trying to plan a meet up for everyone in the Central NY area. Right now, we're thinking the meeting place might be Syracuse, since it's between Rochester and Ithaca/Binghamton. We have a few responses but we would definitely like to get more people to join!

So if you're in the CNY area and want to join us, hop over on this thread and let us know!

As you all know, we've been searching for a suitable venue for, ohhhh about, 8 months. We went to look at a few more places in the Binghamton area on Sunday and struck out. Four times. So far my plan of do-everything-myself and have it all be awesome has failed.

Hands down, a vacation. Whether it's a week long retreat or just a much needed weekend staycation, vacations have the ability to cure. I can't actually go on vacation right now, and actually we just got back from a weekend in the Outer Banks at the end of May, but all this stress has me thinking about our future honeymoon.

My first instinct?
 
A secluded beach vacation somwhere like the Bahamas or Tahiti.

Weddings are full of them. Planning a wedding requires about 58,392 decisions to be made and in most cases, a number of compromises as well.

One of our first big decisions and compromises came in picking a season for the wedding.

I love fall. I get so excited when it starts to cool down a little and the leaves change colors and everything just feels all cozy.

Notice the lack of posts lately? Well, I've been writing them. They just never make it out of draft stage.

First of all I've been ridiculously busy. But second of all (and most of all) I am stressed out beyond belief. Like so stressed out I'm just plain angry. So maybe if I just let it all out there, something will give and I can get over it and move on.

I know that's kind of a weird thing to hate, but I do. I really, really dislike almost all kinds of birds. Let's go over a brief list of reasons why.

1. They are really loud
2. They poop all over the place
3. They're smart and kiniving
4. They are not very nice

Good. Me too.

So I told you before about my venue wish list and all about how I haven't found a venue we like. Well, we still haven't found anything. On top of that wish list is another secret wish list that I keep in my head that keeps me from liking a lot of our options.

I have my comments setting set up to email me with every comment left on my blog. My intent with that is just so I can take a quick look at them and make sure they aren't nasty or spam and so I can respond to the nice commenters. Well, I've never actually gotten one of those you-have-a-comment emails.

And now I know why! Earlier today, I got an email from a super nice lady telling me that it was impossible to comment on my blog because of the word verification-thingy.

I was so relieved after reading that email. All this time I thought you guys just didn't really like me all that much! (Which still may be true, but apparently at least one reader does!)

So anyway, I fixed the problem for now (hopefully). But if you encounter any other glitches on the site, let me know! The template I started with was a little glitchy to begin with and all of the amateur changes I've made to it haven't really helped.

And thanks again to Dancy over at Beer Budget Bride's Musings. So you should all say thanks on my behalf and take a look-see on over there. But don't get so caught up in the awesomeness that is her blog and never come back! But still go.

A house and puppy.

Sean and I have been happy apartment dwellers for about 4 years now. We lived in a smallish one bedroom apartment that served us well for about three years, but we quickly outgrew it. When Sean was hired full time at his current job last Summer and we (he) was making good money, we moved out, and up. Now we live in an almost 1200 square foot, two bedroom, two bath apartment that oozes awesomeness. It's on the second (and top) floor but has a private entrance, our own washer and dryer, cozy porch, tankless hot water heater and it was brand spanking new when we moved in.

So lets recap: our rent is reasonable and our apartment is awesome. So why am I itching to move out? My sister.

True to the title of this post, I have been incredibly lazy in my wedding planning lately.

Does it exist?

At this point, I don't think it does.

Sean and I (mostly I) have spent many hours at the google machine searching for the perfect venue. Here are a few of the things we're looking for in a venue:

After my first bridal show success with my mom and sister, I was excited to drag Sean to some other shows around Rochester where we live. So a mere one week after the bridal show in Binghamton, I ventured off to a bridal show at the RIT Inn in Henrietta. I told Sean about how much fun we had at the first show and how we even got to try some yummy food to get him excited to come. I lived to regret those words.

I think it's time that I finally get down to talking about a few of the potential vendors from our first bridal show. There were tons of vendors there but only a few really stood out.

I know I've been MIA for a few weeks months but I promise I have a good excuse! For the last six months I've been working on a huge project. One that has taken me five years of long hard work to complete. My Bachelors Degree!!!

I came home from our first bridal show with a gigantic shopping bag full of vendor information and pamphlets. My game plan for the show was to stop at each table, grab some information and be on our way. Then I could look through the information at home at my leisure and visit vendor websites or call them for more information. This went pretty well except for the fact that after Sean and I looked through our gigantic bag of vendor information our living room floor looked a little something like this:

As promised, here is my tutorial on how to make an inspiration board in Gimp.

Ye be forewarned, this post is long and image heavy!

If you've never used Gimp, it can be really intimidating. It is basically a free version of Photoshop, though I haven't used Photoshop in years so I couldn't tell you how similar they are.

Here is what our final product will look like:

If you took a look (in a book?) at my buff bride page recently, you saw that I updated it with my weight loss for February. And that it was a mere 3 lbs. That's certainly progress and I'm happy about it, but it should have been better. Here's part of the reason why I had a fairly small loss: I'm a carb and sugar addict.

Take for example a snapshot of what I bought at the store last night.

Last night Sean and I went to the mall, just to walk around and browse the stores. I purposely parked next to Macy’s so we could walk through the menswear section to look through the suits. We really don't need to make a decision any time soon, but for some reason I had suits on the brain.

We meandered through all of the suit racks and only saw one light gray suit in a sea of black and dark blue. I asked Sean what he thought of it and this is the conversation that followed:

I finally got the design work for this blog mostly finished!

If you were poking around last week or the week before I'm sure you noticed things were kind of a mess. None of the buttons lined up on the top nav bar and things just looked weird in general. Well, I spent approximately 86598 hours in Gimp working on a new design and then 287589 hours wading around in the html code for this template making some changes. It took a long time and it was really frustrating at times.

A few weekends ago Sean and I went home to meet with our parents and hammer out a guest list.

I know the guest list is usually a stressful issue for couples, but so far it has gone pretty well for us. From the moment we decided to get married I knew the wedding would be big, and started to prepare for a guest list with around 200 guests. My parents are divorced so on my side of the guest list we have my mom's family, my dad's family, and my step-dad's family. Sean's side of the family is also really big; his dad has 9 brothers and sisters. That's a lot of family! And that's not even including friends!

or how I plan to gain 100 lbs.

I'm sure you already know that candy buffets are the coolest thing since sliced bread to have at your wedding nowadays.

If you don't know, it goes like this: Couples put out jars of candy and little bags or boxes for guests to fill up with the candy of their choice. Something like this:

I convinced my mom and sister to join me at our very first bridal show last weekend. I've wanted to go to a bridal show since about ten seconds after I got that ring on my finger. Why? Mostly to win stuff, but it also seemed like it would be pretty fun! A few shows came and went but we were always busy and had other plans that kept us from going.

Is what I aim to be.

When I was a kid, I made clothes, boots and a crown for my cat. Seriously. We have photographic evidence of this, not that my mom would let me forget it! As a teenager (and captain of the cheerleading squad) I made tons of snacks, ironed the the skirts of every single girl on the squad before important games and made schedules and reminders for everone's locker doors. In my early college years I got into stamping and cardmaking. For the last few years I've made all of my Christmas cards and birthday cards for family. My point is: I like making stuff! I like to cook, I like to craft, I like to do everything myself.

Today I finished up my last final for Winter quarter. For those of you unfamiliar with a quarter system for a college, let me explain. Semester schools usually have two 15 week semesters and about a month vacation around Christmas time. RIT does a quarter system. We have three 10 week quarters instead so our schedule looks like this: Fall - 10 weeks of classes, 1 week of finals, 1 week of vacation; Winter - 3 weeks of classes, 2 weeks of vacation, 7 weeks of classes, 1 week of finals, 1 week of vacation; Spring - 10 weeks of classes, 1 week of finals and then Summer break unless you are taking classes. Why am I telling you all of this boring scheduling crap? Because it makes for one busy stressed out student!

We learn what the average student learns in 15 weeks, in 10. That by itself makes for a lot of work, but when you add on 20 hours a week of work, maintaining a social life and family time as well as trying to plan a wedding? Well, it just doesn't all fit. This week was finals week and I literally spent the last three days doing work and had... oh about ten minutes of free time.

Anywho, the semester is over and for the rest of this week and all of next week all I have to do is work. I've got a bunch of stuff I want to blog about like some diy projects, our guest list, budget and a bridal show I went to with my  mom and sister. So over the next week or so I'll get those posts out and hopefully fix all of the formatting problems with this new layout.

I thought I'd give you a little more detail on the inspiration board I posted before. Here it is again:

I really didn't like the layout and design of my old template so I decided to give this blog a makeover.

I love the design of this template but it needs a little bit of work because some of the buttons and clickable things are a little off. I started working on it on Saturday and was knee deep in html code all weekend and it's still not fixed!

Anyway, stay with me. If you try to poke around you'll notice things are a little off, but I should have them all fixed soon.

Alright so I have a few things to blog about and we are nearing the end of the quarter at school so I should have some free time to pump out some posts soon. Here are a few things we've thought about that I'll be blogging about soon:

* Cake(s)
* Flowers
* DIYing
* Budget/Guest List size

I also have a few posts over at my other blog that I'm going to migrate over here because I think I'm going to stay over here at blogger.

Anywho... to make up for being such a bad blogger, I'll let you in on a little secret.


Over at Backyard Bride she's giving away a $25 Gift Card to Ulta. If you've never been to Ulta, you should get over there. They have a boatload of beauty products ranging from the stuff you find a drugstores to some higher-end stuff. They have sales all the time so make sure you sign up for their free rewards card and give them your address so they can send you tons of coupons ('cause they will.... seriously... tons.) So get over there and enter to win! And while you're over there, read that blog! It's pretty awesome. (much better than mine! ha!)

I want to be a good blogger, but lately I've been sucking... big time.

Let me make a few excuses for myself. Our wedding will be in the Summer or Fall of 2011. That's quite some time from now. We just are not at a point where we're making big decisions. We don't have a date, a venue or really much at all planned. I'm also a full time student and I work part time, which doesn't leave a lot of time in my life for other things like blogging. But, in the interest of full disclosure, I still spend a lot of time doing wedding research and preliminary planning so I really should have things to write about.

I've also been switching back and forth between accounts on blogger and wordpress. I'm still not completely sure which account I'll stick with, but for now I'm back with blogger.

But I do have something good to show you today! (don't be so shocked!)

I made an inspiration board!!


We're hoping for a wedding that is earthy, romantic and a little rustic. I love, love, love everything about this board. I love the colors.. I love the feel of it. I made it without collaborating with FI and only showed him when it was finished to see what he thought. What was the first thing he said? "What's with that gray suit?" *sigh* I love the idea of the men in light gray suits, but FI isn't sold on it. Otherwise he said he liked it so as of now it's our plan.

Did you create an inspiration board?

One thing I know for certain is that we are not having a kid free wedding!

I have four sisters and three of them have kids. I have eight nieces and nephews! It would be a huge pain for them to all arrange for sitters for the kids but more importantly, I could not imagine our wedding without my nieces and nephews all there. We also have other friends and family that have young kids that I would definitely love to have attend.

Not only could I not dream of excluding my nieces and nephews from attending the wedding, but I really want to find a way to include them all somehow. I couldn't possibly choose only a few and leave the others out.

So let's think about this. I have four nieces ages 4, 7, 11 & 13. I also have four nephews ages 1, 3, 7 & 12. I think. They grow so fast!

The two older nephews I think could help at the ceremony with seating guests or passing out programs or something. They are really sweet and always helpful.

I'm hoping my oldest three nieces will be willing to do readings at the ceremony. They are plenty old enough and I think that is something they would enjoy. And of course it would mean so much to us.

That leaves the three youngest. They will probably be ring bearer's and a flower girl. But we are still open to other ideas too.

Katie Bower at All Bower Power had a really cute and unique way of including kids in her ceremony as celebration children. The boys carried bells and the girls carried streamers and went down the isle saying "The bride is coming!!". How cute is that?!

Of course we also have to consider the reception... but that's another post!

Are you having kids at your ceremony/reception? How are you including them?