Wednesday, August 18, 2010

My Motherboard, My Self

Yes, that is a title of a Sex and the City Episode. Ya know, the one where Carrie's laptop crashes and she loses "her whole life"?? 



Well it happened to me.  My laptop's hard drive decided to commit suicide.  And, like Carrie, I did not backup.  (I know, shoot me now).  Which means, in no uncertain terms, that everything is gone.  Specifically, everything in my precious Wedding folder.  My budget spreadsheets, inspiration photos, saved blog posts, to-do lists and schedules.  Even worse is the fact that last month's DIY schedule task was to create all of the preliminary designs for everything paper-related.  That was hours of designing favor tags, programs, soda bottle labels, coloring books, iteneraries, and a ridiculous handrawn map - and now it's all been lost to cyberland.  ("In cyberland, we only drink...diet coke." Kudos to those who know what the hell that means).

Oh and did I mention that I also lost all of my photos, including the gratuitous ring porn that I have yet to share of my engagement ring, the pictures of my wedding dress and shopping experience, and adorable pictures and videos of my baby from Christmas?  And the video of Pete's proposal. Yeah, I'm mad.

So what's the lesson in this, my dear readers?  LISTEN!!! when everyone tells you to backup your stuff. I cannot stress this enough, especially if you are planning a wedding.  That *precious wedding folder* is not so precious when you realize you have to create it from scratch all over again.

Are Carrie Bradshaw and me the only ones this stupid, or can anyone else out there feel my pain?

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

August 17th.

I woke up this morning and literally did not know what day it was. Pete told me it was Tuesday...and within a few hazy moments I realized what day it was.  It is August 17th.  A date that I will never forget as long as I live.

Nine years ago today, my entire world was both destroyed and reborn at the same time.  I slept in too late.  I went to the second day of school of my sophomore year.  I ate Subway for lunch.  I met my future sister-in-law.  I spent a couple hours on the phone with my best friend.  And my mother passed away.

Nine years ago today, my brothers suddenly looked different to me.  I find that no matter how old they get, I always picture their faces in my mind the way they looked that night. That was the night that I found out exactly why God blessed me with those big football players - I needed their immense strength to hold me up.

Nine years ago today, I experienced the last day of my childhood.  I woke up on August 17th as a 15 year old.  I woke up on August 18th as an adult.  And I woke up today as a woman, a mother, and a soon-to-be wife who still misses her Mommy.

Planning my wedding without my mom is something that brings me pain all the time.  She was buying things for my future wedding when I was 10.  From what I have learned since her death, I now know that she knew she would not be around to see me as a bride.  She knew she would not be here to fight with me over my wedding dress, to help me choose flowers, or to pin my veil into my hair.  I cannot imagine the kind of pain she felt by knowing this.  On the other hand, I always pictured her being there.  And even though it's been nine years without her, and I have already been a bride and had a wedding without her many years ago, it is still hard to face the reality that she will not be there in person when Pete and I are married.

However, she will be there in spirit.  Her photo will be placed in a locket and tied to my bouquet, along with the heirloom wedding ring she gave to me a few weeks before her death.  Her seat will remain empty, and little Ryan will place a rose there in her honor.  And in the last few minutes before the ceremony, I will privately join with my brothers for a prayer to remember her.  She will be there.

As every August 17th passes each year, it amazes me how much has changed since the year before.  It amazes me how much more I grow into the kind of woman my mother was, and how much closer I feel to her as I get older.  As much as it hurts to remember this date, I look forward to it each year.  It marks one more year that I have survived. One more year that I have grown.  One more year of learning to understand the woman she was.  One less year that I have to live without her.  That's a good feeling.

"Every now and then, the softest breath upon my skin, I feel you come back again, and it's like you haven't been gone a moment from my side, like the tears were never cried, like the hand of time are holding you and me. There are more than angels watching over me, oh I believe." 

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I love you Mama.
August, 17th 2010.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

It takes two, baby.

My relationship with our Save-The-Dates goes waaaay back.  As in, long before we were engaged.  I saw this post on Weddingbee, by Miss Nachos, who admittedly copied Mrs. Piglet, about boarding pass STD's.  Here's the Piglet version:

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I decided I must have them - Vegas-style of course.  Little did I know I had to have two complete sets of them.

The very first project on the wedding DIY schedule was the boarding pass STD's.  I slaved away at the design of these babies on Microsoft Word for a few weeks before I finally came up with a design we were happy with.  Even though we knew they wouldn't be mailed until July or August, we took them to kinko's and got them printed, and spent two fabulous night cutting, taping, folding and embossing. 
My boys hard at work:
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They sat, completely sealed, in their custom-made wrap-around labels, on our computer desk for the next two months...with the exception of the one boarding pass magnet we kept on our fridge...

I had to look at that thing every time I opened the fridge (which is a lot, based on how much weight I need to lose).  And the more I looked at it, the more it daunted me with its imperfections.  Did I mention that I'm a perfectionist?? Well if not, here's the first glimpse at the evidence.

About three weeks ago, I broke down and confessed to my super-patient fiance that I hated our STD's.

I expected him to tell me, "tough shit, they're done and ready to be mailed, get over your craziness."  Ahhh...but he loves me.  And somehow, completely unknown to me, the man just gets me...and so he lovingly said that we could redo them from top to bottom if I wasn't satisfied. Gosh I love him.

After another night or two of designing, cutting, folding and tying (no embossing), we had a happy little pile of these:

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I don't want to reveal pictures of either design until everyone has received the final product, but I will say that I was much happier with Round Two.  Still not perfect, but perfect enough for people who aren't as crazy as I am. :)  I'm sure nobody will take into account the fact that they were completely handmade twice, as they glance at them for ten secoonds and (hopefully) stick them on their fridge...but at least I'm happy with the one I get to stare at every time I get a craving for something yummy.

P.S.  Our STD's are not the only DIY project that has already been done more than once.  But we'll talk about that later, after enough time has passed for you all to reasonably forget about my craziness. :)

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

'The time has come,' the walrus said...

...to talk of an intimate wedding.

Our Save-the-dates went into the mail today!  It was a very exciting feeling to see them go - it made me feel like this is really happening.  What started off as a 14-month engagement has now evaporated into just 9 months, and 60 of our closest family and friends will soon become official guests of our wedding as cute little black and white envelopes arrive in their mailboxes. 

But I must be honest. The excitement of my trip to the mailbox today is also accompanied with a bit of guilt, as I know it will also become official very soon to some people that they are not on our guest list.  This is what comes with planning an intimate wedding.

We did purposely want a small wedding. I wrote of this once before. We want our wedding to be filled the closest people in our lives, and we want to be able to celebrate with each and every one of them - not just hug them and say thankyouandgoodbye.  But I would be lying if I said that money did not eventually become a factor in the total list count, because it did, and unfortunately we had to be very selective with the final numbers.  This is what comes with a wedding budget that is less than 1/4 of the cost of the average American wedding.

 We tried to keep as many people as we could by choosing a cocktail-party reception over a sit-down dinner, choosing a location that would allow us to bring our own beverages and alcohol, and throwing out the traditional rehearsal dinner.  But in the end, cuts still had to be made.

So I would like to write to those who will not be recieving a save-the-date:

Please don't hate us.  Please don't think that we do not value you as a friend or coworker, because we do.  We have so many people that are part of our lives everyday, and you are one of them, and we apologize if anyone's feelings are hurt.  We are paying for most of this wedding ourselves, and had to limit our guest list to only family and a few select friends.  In the tough economy we are in, everyone is making sacrifices, and we hope you understand this as we are all facing challenging cutbacks in our lives.  We hope that you will still follow our journey to our wedding day and celebrate with us individually after we return a married couple. :)


Anyone have any words of wisdom on dealing with the backlash of an intimiate wedding?

Monday, August 9, 2010

The Doublemint Twins

That's the name that was given to MOH Andi and me back in high school.  

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We may not have ever had those awesome green outfits, but we sure rocked our matching Moulin Rouge Tanks and blonde hair like no other. If I had the pics on my comp, I would share them.
 (image found here)

We are not sisters, but we are twins of our own kind.  And in true twin fashion, the other half of the Doublemint package went off to a cliff overlooking the ocean yesterday and got herself engaged!

We have joked in the past of how awesome it would be if we were engaged at the same time...well, apparently our guys were listening or something because here we are.  Two soon-to-be crazy organized brides, planning small out-of-town weddings, within just a few months of each other.  Hello awesomeness.

It's so fun to get to share this happy and exciting (and stressful) time with someone I love so much.  We might as well just be little girls with pillowcase veils on our heads with how giddy we are.

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(This is by-far not the best photo to showcase our twinsieness, but it's the most ridiculously happy picture of us ever taken, at a Metallica concert two years ago)

 And ya know what's even better than planning our weddings together?    

We both get to spend the rest of our lives with two of the sweetest, most patient, and wonderful guys in the world.  We have had our ups and downs with each other's significant-others in the past, so I think we are so lucky now that we both support, respect and admire the man our other half has chosen.  I hope all girlfriends get so lucky.

To A&N: I am so incredibly happy for you and I feel so blessed to have you both in my life.  You two are so perfect for each other - even more perfect than Tom & Mike.  And that says a lot.  Congratulations!

Friday, August 6, 2010

I'm not crazy, I'm smart.

Or maybe I'm just a ridiculous type-A personality with an obsession for control, preparedness and organization...yes? Okay moving on.

I L.O.V.E. being crafty and artistic. (It must be the wicked combo of teacher-artist-theatre geek in me.) So of course I plan on DIY-ing many elements of our wedding. Now here's where you might walk out on me: I have an 11-month wedding project schedule.

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Yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds. I have completely outlined, by the month, when each and every wedding project will get done, and I began the projects back in June. Mind you, our wedding is still over 9 months away.

The reason I claim that I am smart, and not crazy (okay maybe a little crazy), is because I simply REFUSE to be a ball of stress right before our wedding, or on our wedding trip, and especially not on our wedding day. When stalking wedding-blog-land, there is one very common theme: for some reason, so many crafty people get stuck doing all their DIY projects in the last few weeks before the wedding. These little lovelies pretty much fall off the face of the planet and go mad with paper cuts and fights with their printers. They are frantic and emotional and just have too much to do. Some of them are lucky in the fact that they find a way to pull everything together in the very last few days and all is well. Other brides are not as lucky. I know this because I was one of them.

I don't want to waste much breath on my first wedding (oh wait, we haven't discussed that yet, have we?  Yes, I've been married before. Let's leave it at that for now.)  But I'll be honest and admit that the week before that wedding, and even the day of the wedding, was completely awful. I was stressed to my core. I was doing everything by myself, I didn't delegate. I spent the rehearsal dinner crying in the bathroom. I had 7 cold sores (from stress) on my not-so-beautiful bride lips by the time I walked down the aisle.


So, cue my happy little wedding project schedule. *sprinkle fairy dust here.* As of now, I am on schedule, and even a little bit ahead. According to my plan, all of the major DIY projects (with the exception of cookies that must be baked) will be completely done one month before the big day. Woo hoo!!!  I will soon start making my schedule for non-projects as well - such as final payments, packing lists and to-do items, so that I can be as stress-free as possible (but yet still in complete control!)  So go ahead and laugh all you want at my obsessive planning, but when you see me calm and healthy and uberly joyous in Las Vegas, my craziness just might be worth it. :)


Anyone else have ridiculous lists laying around?

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Making It Happen

It's time to get the ball rolling on my wedding blogging.

I realize that it appears as if Pete and I have not done anything wedding-planning-related over the past couple months. I have pretty much only been writing about the crappiness of this summer, and while we have been preoccupied with money issues, summer school, sickness and hives, we actually have gotten some stuff done for this whole wedding thing.

Most importantly, we planned and budgeted and booked(!!!) our little hearts out.

Let's backtrack: In April, we booked our ceremony location. It was very important to us that we get married at the Wynn...so we booked it without much of a plan (or budget) for the rest of the wedding.

By May, we had established a rough budget based upon many different factors, and we started creating a plan to fit that budget. We had price quotes and menus and all that in the works.

Then June rolled around. I really don't want to get into the details, so I will just state the fact that we lost a lot. of. money. from the wedding budget. Now, just to clarify, one of the reasons we chose Vegas was because we were already on such a teeny-tiny budget and our limited funds would not afford a traditional wedding in our hometowns. So when you take an already tiny budget and smash it with a sledgehammer...things get tricky. There were several moments when we felt we may have had to nix the entire wedding altogether.

But we pushed through and got creative. I scoured websites and blogs and message boards. I combed through excel spreadsheets like a madwoman. And then, thank goodness, we were blessed with some help from family and an awesome Maid of Honor who helped get things going. :) We had to sacrifice a lot of the original plans, but we eventually came up with a plan that we knew would work, and we went with it. So this is what we did:

We booked the caterer.

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(Btw we will not at all be having watermelon at our reception, but its the only picture I could find from our caterer. Image found here.)

My girls and I booked the fabulous hair and makeup guys at Glamsquad.

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We nailed down the very minimal floral plan with Wynn.

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(inspiration image from theknot.com)

We booked the awesome photographer for our Strip Photo Tour.

If you feel so inclined, visit this link to view one of my favorite pics from his gallery:

We even booked a little surprise thing that's very hush-hush.
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And then we sealed the deal by getting the suite for the reception booked.

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Ah yes, we now have a somewhat-complete plan...and I am blissfully out of wedding-budget-freak-out-land. We are still working on some additional details, but at least we have the biggest stuff booked and I've gotta say it's a really nice feeling knowing it's all falling into place, even if it is with an itty-bitty amount of money and dramatically-altered plans. The important thing is that we are getting married (!!!) in a place that means the world to us, with the people we love around us, and we are going to have a hell of a time. <3

Next up...let's save the date.



Sunday, August 1, 2010

The Jam Plan

For those of you who are not obsessed with Friends enough to know what the hell I'm talking about, there's an episode where Monica is trying to get over her recent heartbreaking split from Richard. She hasn't been sleeping, she's been depressed, and struggling to get through each day. Finally she wakes up one day and starts making jars and jars of homemade jam. When the others ask why, she responds:

"I'm sick and tired of being depressed about Richard. I needed a plan. A plan to get over my man. What's the opposite of man? Jam!!!"

Ross and Rachel, surrounded by Jam, reading Monica'a note that says "Went to get more Jars"

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(image found here)

Obviously making Jam was not at all related to her breakup, but it was her way of taking control of her life and finding something that makes her feel better.

Well of course I haven't been going through the depression of a heartbreak (been there, done that), but this summer has still been very rough for me and I have been struggling a lot with anxiety and sadness over certain areas of my life. In my last post, I shared my frustration with how things have been going, and that I was working on plans to try to get over the things that have been bogging me down.

So without further ado, this is my Jam Plan.

Starting today:

  1. Monday nights will be Family Night (or FHE for all you lovely LDS folk). For at least a few hours, there will be no homework, no wedding planning, no budegting, no cleaning, no Ryan begging for someone to play with him. The three of us will do something as a family that Ryan will have fun doing - rent a movie and popcorn, build a fort, make homemade playdough, have a picnic, do some puzzles or board games, whatever. I need this night as a way to combat my feelings of guilt and stress from spending most every moment of my life doing things I hate (school, homework, etc) and missing out on chances to enjoy my son while he is still precious and small enough to actually want to be with me. Yes, it breaks my heart when he asks me to play with him and I have to say no because I have a paper to finish writing. But in the Jam Plan, there will at least be guaranteed family time every week that will make all three of us happier, less stressed, and hopefully get rid of some of that heartbreak. Pete and I strongly believe that family and parenting are the most important things in life, so we are taking one more step to make our family and our home the best place it can be.
  2. Saturday Nights will be Date Night. Almost every successful couple will tell you that regular date nights are essential to maintaining your sanity and your relationship. Pete and I have been trying to make this ritual happen for a long time, but have always lost the battle to not having a babysitter, being too broke to pay for a babysitter, and being too broke to even go out. But in the Jam Plan, I finally demanded that we make it happen, even though it will mean having date night at home. So from now on, at 8:00 every Saturday night, the little one will be put to bed, and we will engage in a strictly no-homework-no wedding planning-no talking about money-no sitting in underwear and pajamas zone. We will put some damn pants on, brush our teeth, maybe even spray some good smelly-stuff on our overworked selves, light some candles, and pretend we're not stressed out parents for a few hours. The goal of this is to eliminate the side effects our relationship is suffering from spending every night reading history books, staring at excel spreadsheets and doing laundry (or in reality, just finding ways to hide all the laundry in the closet). With this part of the Jam Plan, hopefully we will become more connected and less stressed even if we don't have the money to go out by ourselves.
  3. I am going to get healthy, dammit! Pete and I sat down yesterday and created a menu for the entire month of August that is healthy, low-fat, low-calorie and budget friendly. In the past I have been able to stick to healthy diets pretty well, it's just a routine I have to get myself back into. Aside from not fitting into any of my clothes, I know my overall health is slacking because of the slacking in the diet. To put it simply, I feel like crap all. the. time. I'm now officially cutting out all soda, high-fructose corn syrup, and as many sweets and saturated fats as possible in order to try to get back to feeling like the me I was two years ago. It helps that I was 40 lbs lighter then too....which brings me to other, not-so-easy part of the Jam Plan: working out. Uggg. This one is going to be hard. I will have to take it in baby steps as I have never been a very active person even when I was a size 3. But I really don't think there's any better motivation to do it than to think of how I want to look in my wedding pictures...and I've only got less than 9 months to pull it off. And let's be honest, my Groom doesn't really want the extra 20 lbs he's got right now either...so we are both going to find some way to get our lazy, exhausted, burnt-out asses off the couch and burn some calories at least 5 days a week.
  4. I'm going to blog 3 times a week. This is pretty simple, especially because I love to write and blogging helps me get things out of my head and reduce stress. But I have been pushing it to the bottom of my to-do list under more imporatant things. I'm going to try my hardest to avoid that, and just do it. Hopefully it will help my mind to become a little less hectic, or in the very least it will bring me one step closer to my Weddingbee goal. Let's face it, once I have decided I am going to do something, it's hard for me to give up.
So there it is, the preliminary plan to get me up and out of my summertime blues. Bring it on, August! I'm ready for you...and I've got Jam!

Anyone else want to eat a PB&J sandwich right now?? Yumm.