Oh, Home Ownership...

Let's go ahead and start this post on a positive note. 

Friday we booked our florist. She did a mock up of what my bouquet will look like and I'm very happy with the results. Check.

Today I paid the deposit and booked our baker. We went with Lori from Bagels and Cakes because she makes awesome "Cake Boss" grooms cakes, which we want. And, the best part, she'll make our rock candy cake for us! This is the inspiration for our cake: 

Obviously ours will be have purple and orange rock candy on it, but that's the gist. Now to find a sweet baseball themed topper.

I also have banana spice muffins in the oven and they have walnuts and white chocolate chips in them. And I'm making pumpkin better than sex cake tonight too. So be jealous of my sweet baking skills. 

Now, for the less exciting part, home ownership.

Right now we're dealing with the dryer. It's not producing heat and our wet clothes are just tumbling endlessly because it has a sensor in it that adds time if things aren't dry yet. It's just over a year old, we got it last year the day after we closed on our house. We bought the extended warranty  but they can't send someone until NEXT Thursday the 29th. Seriously. That's more than a week, it's insane.

We also got our gas logs hooked up in our fireplace. The bill for that hasn't come yet. I can only imagine what that will be. We ended up having to buy a hood for it too since we have an old school, heat producing fireplace with a very shallow firebox with outward slanting walls. Can't risk ruining our tv that's mounted over the mantle. Or, ya know, the custom, hand carved, original 1930's wooden mantle. So today we figure out the technique for how to properly use masonry bits and screws to drill that into the brick face of the fireplace. It seems to be diverting the heat enough, so we'll see.

Annnnnd, just to add more to the fun, last night we discovered the kitchen sink leaks. I remember when we had our inspection Hans told us there was still one rouge ceramic pipe under there to keep an eye on. Surprisingly enough though, it's the pvc pipes and they've obviously been leaking for a while. It smells like moldy broccoli under there. Good thing nothing of value is underneath. Just the left over paint cans from when the house was painted while it was on the market. I had intended to take them out, clean up under there and move our cleaning stuff under there. Now, until we fix that, and probably the floors under it that are probably rotting, it's nothing but a bucket so we can still use the sink with minimal fear of further destroying our floors. Not that we like them anyways, but still. I had every hope to lay new floors over the existing since I'm terrified of what an 81 year old sub floor looks like and have no desire to find. I may have to face that fear now. 

Our next house will definitely be newer. This will be my only blue and yellow 1930's kitchen and pink 1950's bathroom. Not that I don't love our house and all it's charm. But I'd give up my pretty original glass doorknobs with skeletons keys for a newer house that didn't require so much damn love. Joy.

Anywhooo, 192 days to go! That's 6 months, 1 week and 4 days. Woo!

Crunch Time

I feel like I'm in wedding crunch time right now. It's getting down to the wire (sort of) and things are starting to get to the point of have-to-get-done-now. 

I've been in contact with our new coordinator a bit. I told her I'd get hold of her after the new year to set up a details meeting. Asked about menu tasting and she said we can set that up whenever. So I'm thinking I may contact her next week about that and set something up for prior to our details meeting.

I have my florist appointment and the final cake appointment on Friday afternoon. Once both those things have deposits down on them I can draft our vendors list to have both for myself and to give to the Ramada, as they require one. I still need to call our DJ again about adding the ceremony music to our contract. 

Speaking of details, I started putting together a list of all the different "details" things that I need to have an answer to when we go to the meeting, such as "centerpieces", "arch decor", "aisle decor", "linens", etc. I figure if I can give a super detailed list, including pictures when possible, to the Ramada, then they can just replicate it on the day of and I won't have to answer any questions or whatever. 

I also met up with my friend Brittany yesterday and asked her if she would do a reading at the ceremony. She said yes and I'm sooo excited for her to be part of our wedding.

I've started to go through my wedding pinterest board and put together a must have list of shots for our photographer. I'll have to have my mother and Rob's mother draft formal family line up must have pictures. I plan on having a list of everyone who will be in pictures, in the order we plan to take them, and give everyone in them a copy so they know when they're needed a for how long. I'd like to take only about 20 minutes for formals then move onto wedding party and then just us pictures. 

Lauren is officially my first bridesmaid to order her dress! Those need to be ordered by December to be here on tim and have time for possible alterations. 

Yesterday I went adult trick or treating, as I called it. I drove down maybe about ten miles of the Seneca Lake Wine Trail to go a cork gathering rampage. I went to maybe seven or eight wineries and it's great because they just dump the corks in a bag and off you go. Love free stuff! I got about half of what we need. If I had the time I would have drove more of the 40 miles trail and been able to get enough, but I'll just go again in a few weeks. I'm going to use them to make escort cards. I figure since we live in wine country that can be my slight nod at that. Plus now my car smells nice like fine wine. 

I feel like I'm forgetting stuff, but maybe not. Anyways...

200 days!!! That's a mere 28 weeks! Or 6 months, 2 weeks and 5 days. 

Coordinating Conundrum

Little snafu today... our coordinator is leaving our venue. I'm a bit sad about this. She's been there 15 years, all the vendors in the area know her and love working with her. She has nothing but amazing reviews. I was so excited to work with her. And that was coming soon, after the six month mark. And now she's leaving. 

I didn't hear this from our venue though, which is some what disconcerting. I found out at work. Our secretary called to confirm our date and room reservations for our winter luncheon, conveniently being held at our venue. She called the coordinator who confirmed, then gave her the new name and contact information for the new, soon to be coordinator. I planned to email to current lady tonight, but I go too caught up with other house things. It's on my to do list for tomorrow. Just... frustrating. I've read too many horror stories on The Knot about girls having the coordinator switched and things not going well. I'm hoping because we still have some time that'll work out alright. 

Otherwise, on the planning front, all the silks I bought showed up. We officially have all our flowers except for the few real ones we're getting for myself, Rob, and our parents. I also bought shoes. I found them a few weeks ago and wasn't ready to commit. I went back for them and they were marked at 30% off. Score!

My dress... I'm stressed again. When I picked it out, the sample was an eight and fit perfectly. But sometimes samples are stretched out from being tried on. I got measured and all my measurements were in between sizes, three different ones to be exact. The consultant told me to pick whatever I was comfortable with so I went with a ten, thinking that was safe. But I tried on some party dresses with Emily and Annie a month or so ago now and those were all eights and fit perfect. I wanted to order an eight when I ordered the dress, but I was nervous it'd be too small and I'd end up in tears. Now I wish I had gotten an eight so I wouldn't have to pay for so many alterations. 

Lastly, rings. My engagement ring is a large, awkward shaped ring that takes up a lot of finger real estate. It's going to be difficult to fin a ring to put next to it. My thought has been to move it to my right hand permanently post wedding and put something flashy in it's place. I found what I wanted online, but the price recently went up. Like way up, like doubled in price up. So in a panic I went to a bunch of jewelry places to search for something similar in store, only to come up disappointed. I finally caved and tried something on next to my ring. I can fit a very thin, small band behind/under it, but I'm not sure. I'm so torn about what to do. 

I'm ready for this wedding to happen already so we can be married and happy and move onto the marriage part. I'm really excited for the wedding, but seven more months might kill me. 

Anyways, today marks exactly seven months! Woohoo!


Update 11-2: A letter came from our venue today. It was really nondescript, just stating there was going to be a change in contact person and that someone would contact us soon with the updated contact information. So it sounds like they haven't actually hired a new coordinator yet. The name that the coordinator gave our secretary was the Sales Director's information, so she must be the stop gap until someone new starts. Hopefully someone's in there soon and we can get caught up on the new person's information and schedule a time to meet them. Frustrating. 

House Keeping Checks

I've been vaguely productive this week. Wedding wise at least. The rest of my life, not so much.

Wedding:
Made a florist appointment
Made a cake finalization appointment/tasting
Temporarily postponed my make up trial until after the holidays
Called our DJ to add ceremony music to our contract. He was on another call and was supposed to call me back but never did. This is just pretty much how he rolls and I'm not concerned. It'll get added one of these days. 
Ordered ten more bouquets of orange gerbera daisies. I now have enough for all five girls bouquets and all our centerpieces.
Ordered three bouquets of purple tulips for the five groomsmen/best man boutineers and to fill out the girls bouquets a bit more. 

That's it. Once we secure the cake and florist we'll have all our vendors booked except for the rehearsal dinner caterer. But that's not a big deal, the place we want to use is aware we intend to book them at some point. Otherwise it'll just be detail now. After the six month mark we can schedule our first appointment with our venue coordinator to start on the details and what not. 

We also Have Daniel's wedding coming up soon; mid December. I'm pretty excited to go down to Chattanooga and see everyone and enjoy someone else's love and hard work. Then after that we can start talking to Daniel about our wedding too, since he'll be officiating for us. 

As for the rest of my life, I've been unusually tired. I've been going to bed early and sleeping right through Rob coming home from work. Normally I wake up when I hear him come home if I'm not still awake, but the last week or so I've slept through it. I'm a really light sleeper. No idea what the deal is. Getting up to work out has been harder than usual too. 

Iron Girl registration in one week. Time to get my triathlon juices flowing. Mini Mussel registration is in three week. Going to tri my tail off this year with three races. Game face time.

220 days to go until wedding day. That's 7 months, 1 week and 1 day!

Picture Perfect Updates

Okay, wedding updates, go!

I bought 150 plum napkins and 150 eggplant chair sashes. I gave the two different color names because that's what they were listed as on the classified posts I purchased them from on The Knot. I know they'll be different shades of dark purple and I don't really care. The table runners I bought a few months ago are a slightly different shade of eggplant then a sashes which showed up over the weekend. So goes life. It'll be dim lighting in the reception, so people won't notice anyways. The napkins should be here any day. I need to do something about the wedding stuff. It no longer fits in the guest room closet. The door no longer closes, and with napkins still to come and two more orders of silk flowers to be placed, it's only going to get worse. 

I need to reschedule my makeup trial. I really need to make it for after the holidays when I can spring the extra money. That means I need to call soon since the trial is scheduled for next week. I also need to call about placing a deposit with our baker and set up a first floral appointment. I plan on sitting down and making all those calls in one swoop some time this week. 

I just sent Emily the tentative shower guest list. There's a few people I'll need to add at some point and a few addresses I need to round up. A few peoples addresses have changed since we originally got them all back in February, so hopefully people will be quick to get back to me. 

Scott took out engagement pictures on Saturday. We went out to camp and the weather was perfect, the sun was shining and the leaves looked pretty and colorful. We took most of the pictures on the challenge course, so they'll be very different and unique from the typical engagement pictures people take. Scott already finished up editing them and put them on a disc that he mailed today. They should be here tomorrow or the next day and I'm sooooo excited to see them. 

Rob and I started to finally actually plug some music into our DJ's online playlist builder. That's fun, but it's not broken down specifically enough so I'm keeping a very detailed running list in a word document as well to have when we meet with him once the date gets closer. 

I'm too tired and headache ridden to rack my brain for non wedding related updates. Work, working out, keeping the house in order, having some really good weekends with Rob and our friends lately. I have my National Credentialing CHES exam this Saturday, so fingers crossed for me.

Also, friends and family coming to the wedding, remember that room reservation are now available  After April 16th you will not be able to get a room and odds are you won't find one anywhere else in town. Geneva is a summer vacation town and is booked solid everywhere all summer. Please plan accordingly. 

As usual, 229 days left, or 7 months 2 weeks and 3 days!

Butter Cream Let Downs

I've been meaning to post for a while now. Oops.

I've been insanely busy at work. It's calming down now. Covering two counties has me running all over the place and consequently I've left a program I need for tomorrow in Yates County. But I have zero desire to go get it, so I'll plan something else instead and we'll do that program the following week. I've also started to let some of the Yates programming slip, since it's not going to be my county much longer and I'm losing my interest in the back and forth nonsense. My boss extended the formal job offer to a girl I graduated college with, but she has to relocate, so it may still be a few weeks or so before she starts. No rest for the weary I suppose. 

As for wedding stuff, it's been slow. There isn't much more to right now until after the holidays other than securing a baker and florist and taking our long over due engagement photos. We went to another cake tasting yesterday with my parents and we were all pretty disappointed. Her cakes tasted generic and out of a box, she didn't make any fillings for us to try even though she told us she made the peanut butter filling as I asked for. She also said she'd have three cakes with all the flavors I asked for and instead we go one cake, no fillings, only plain white and chocolate cake with plain buttercream on half and peanut butter buttercream on the other half. She kept pushing us for specific design details, which we don't have yet, and she can't do a "cake boss" style grooms cake. So, she's out. My parents told me to make another appointment at Bagels and Cakes, where we went last time and we'll go eat more cake there and put down our deposit with Lori. 

I told my mom I'd make a florist appointment for October sometime for her and I. I also ordered one of those cute custom hangers for my dress. It's made of cherry wood and will say "Mrs Fields", which is exciting. 

Our engagement photos are the next hurdle. We were supposed to do them like a month ago, but rescheduled for October 13th. We picked that date because the camp 5K is also then so we'll be in Syracuse anyways. But Annie made her birthday shindig for that afternoon now, so it might be hard for us to get Scott to get back out to camp after the race to take them. He's running it with us, but we'll want to go home and shower first then go back. So who knows. It's frustrating. 

Anyways, that's enough for now. 

250 days left until the wedding. That's 8 months, 1 week and 1 day. Woo!

Party Time!

Oh my, I've been meaning to write, but I've been busy! We have finally finished the deck. A few balusters left to stain and one more lattice sheet to go up underneath to keep butthead puppy from going under and digging, but it's done. We even bought fancy furniture to put on the deck. 

We put up cute color lights around the umbrella too. Looks like a stock photo out of a BB&B catalog. We're good like that.

Before and after of the back of the house. Yeah, that took two and half months, but it was worth it.

Also not wedding related, work has been busy! The Ontario county educator got a job offer elsewhere and money talks. And they needed her IMMEDIATELY. Like they called her and asked her to start the next day. She stuck out that week, but she was gone after Friday. So my boss has me covering Ontario and Yates county right now until we hire a new educator. And when we do, they'll take over Yates from me and I get to move into Ontario. No more commuting! My office is only a few blocks from our house and I get to work with people again! No more endless hours in an office all alone anymore. 

Wedding related, not much. We have a cake tasting scheduled for the 16th that I need to change. I forgot I have to be in Syracuse that day to watch Cloe while my parents are down in NYC for a Yankee game. Talked to our photographer a bit about an additional photo shoot. I reallllly, need to get a jump on finding a florist. OH, I also emailed our DJ and asked him to add doing the music for the ceremony to our contract. We originally only booked him for the cocktail hour and reception. But we need him for the whole day. Haven't heard back yet, but since he's the most highly sought after DJ in the region, I'm not taking it personally. I'll call him in a few weeks if it's still no return email. I know he's busy.

That's my news for now I guess. All our friends are coming this weekend for an early birthday bash for Rob. He turns a whooping 29 next week. What an old man he is =P

In my usual fashion, 270 days left. Or 8 months and 4 weeks. Sooo close. We were over 500 days away like yesterday, I swear. The time is getting away from us!