We Won!!

Oh my gosh, you guys!  We won!  Seriously, we won.  I never win anything, but tonight, we won!!!

You're probably all wondering what I'm talking about.  Well, let me start from the beginning.  Tonight we went to a Sip and Scan party at Macy's to register.  We had a great time, walking around and making tons of decisions about what we want our future house to look like.  Oh... and we had a good time playing with the scan guns too. 

Registering, 0-0-7 style

The fiance was more excited than me, I'm pretty sure.  But really just to use the scanners. 

"He turned it sideways!  That's a killshot!  KILLSHOT!!"  Yes, we're that ridiculous.  But we sure gave the other people in the store registering some entertainment as they watched us pose and take pictures.  And I must admit, it was pretty fun to walk around and scan all of this stuff that other people will buy for us.  We shopped for 3 hours and left without spending a dime.  All in all, a beautiful thing. 

So back to the whole winning thing.  When we came in, they gave us a raffle ticket and told us they were going to be pulling a few tickets every so often during the evening.  And let me just tell you that I have the worst luck but somehow K's luck must have overpowered mine tonight because we won the raffle.  Of course, by the time we won the raffle, most of the good stuff was taken.  But still, our number was called and we won!!  See how excited we are??

To be honest, the gift wasn't nearly as exciting as we thought.  Two champagne flutes with the signature Macy's star on them.  But, oh well.  We still won, and that's something. 

So, anyway, we had a fantastic time.  K even gave up the scanner for a few minutes so I could scan the item I am most excited about.  Wait for it....






























Still waiting??  Okay, good.  Here it is!!

A KitchenAid stand mixer!!  Whoo-hoo!!  I'm super excited!  I can't wait to make cookies, and mashed potatoes, and pastas, and... pretty much everything in this thing.  Can't.  Wait.  

What was the item you were most excited about getting when you registered?   

Vistaprint Frustrations

Unlike a lot of the creative women out there, we decided to order our STD's instead of DIYing, which is totally fine with us.  A few months ago, livingsocial.com had this great deal for vistaprint, which we jumped on immediately.  $10 for $50 worth of printed products at vistaprint.com, before shipping or taxes.  Fantastic deal!  So we each purchased one of these deals with the intention to use them for our save-the-dates.

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Fast forward to tonight.  We curled up on my couch with laptop in hand and designed our save-the-dates.  We used one of the many gorgeous photos taken by our amazing photographer and were ready to order.  Unfortunately, we had to split the purchase into two transactions in order to use both of our coupons.  It took a lot of math and playing with the numbers to figure out the best way to do this because if we spent over our coupon by $25, we got free shipping.  So we finally figured out how we needed to split it and put in the first order.  After the order was placed, a box popped up to order more STD's.  I clicked on the order button without reading the fine print, and quickly discovered that they simply added the 50 STD's to my order, rather than putting them in a separate transaction.  Needless to say, this totally screwed my entire plan.

So I went in and tried to change my order to take off the extra STD's.  Clicking through the FAQ's on the Help section lead me to a very unhelpful paragraph telling me that you cannot change orders, just cancel.  This was getting ridiculous so I decided to call them.  Unfortunately for us, they were closed.  So at this point, I decided to cancel my order placed less than 10 minutes prior and just restart the whole process.

After I clicked on cancel my order, I was told that my order could not be cancelled because it was already processed.  How convenient.  I find it amazing that they could process my payment without actually being open for business.  So, at this point, I just ordered the rest of what I needed and said screw it.  It just wasn't worth the hassle.  But the fiance plans on making a call tomorrow because this was just ridiculous.  And honestly, if anything, we should get the free shipping on the first order where I accidentally ordered 50 extra save-the-dates. 

They sure don't make it easy, do they?  What about you all?  Did you have any frustrations in dealing with vendors or companies?

Guest Book Alternatives

I posted awhile back about our tree guest book we were planning.  I still love this idea and I am super excited to see how it turns out.  But we still wanted to find a way for our wedding guests to send us off with their well wishes and advice.  As with pretty much everything wedding related, there are TONS of ideas out there and it's so difficult to narrow it down.  But we've done our best and I'm pretty excited to share with you what we've come up with.  But before I do, let me show you some of the runner-ups. 

This first option is pretty popular, and I really liked it.  And since we've been going with kind of a "tree theme", it sounded perfect for us!  What am I talking about?  A wish tree, of course!  Something like...

this...

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Now, I have pretty simple taste, so this particular example is a little much for me.  But, the concept, I love.  When guests come into the ceremony or reception area, they take a card and write their well wishes on the card for the bride and groom.  These are then hung on the tree to make an amazing decoration, and some pretty fantastic reading material.

I've seen a few variations on this theme, like a wish jar: 

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 A wish book:

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I really love the idea of our wedding guests imparting some wisdom or wishes to us as we start our lives together.  But we've decided to put a little spin on the ideas I've just shown you.  Each table at our reception will be numbered and we're going to use these numbers for something a bit different.  See below.

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At every table, there will be a small journal or book with a number on the outside.  Inside that book, the people at that particular table will write notes to us to be read on that year anniversary.  For instance, those at table 2 will write letters to us that will we read on our 2nd year anniversary.  We really like this because it allows us to spread out the love and continue to hear from our loved ones for years to come. 

While I wish I could claim complete responsibility for this idea, I cannot.  I found this idea on this webpage, along with a ton of guest book alternative ideas.  What do you think? 

Save-the-Dates: Which Photo to Choose?

After my last post, I can honestly say that I love our photographer.  He's fantastic and did a great job on our pictures.  K and I have been looking through them and trying to figure out which one to use for our engagement picutres, and we could use your help.  There are SO many good ones, it's so hard to choose! I think we decided that we want one that we are both looking forward, and not at each other.  Unless we find an STD we like that can hold more than one photo.  Then we may need to re-think the whole thing.  So, what do you think of the photos below?  Which would you choose? 

Option 1: 



I love this photo for a few reasons.  I think we both look good in it and I love the background of it.  Very naturey and just completely us.  K doesn't like his face as much in this one, but I think he looks great. 

Option 2: 

This photo is nice because it really highlights us.  There's not much in the background here, which I'm not so sure about.  Although I guess we should be what people are looking at, not the background. 

Option 3:

I love this picture, I just think it might be a little too in your face for STD's (hee hee).  But it's a great picture of both of us and we look very happy, which is a good thing when you're getting married. 



Option 4:

This might be my favorite.  I love the trees in the background and we both look good in it.  But it's such a hard choice!! 

What are your thoughts?  Which would you choose?

Engagement Photos are Heeerrrreeee!!!!

Okay, so I'm super excited to share this with you all.  I told you awhile ago about our amazing photographer and the difficult choice that we had to make.  With the package we chose with Chris we got an engagement session.  We were waiting for the weather to warm up so we could get some nice pictures with things in bloom instead of a bunch of dead trees.  It felt like forever until it warmed up here in ATL, but we finally went out a few weeks ago to Stone Mountain with Chris and did our engagement shoot. 

I learned a few things that day.  Firstly, I am not, nor will I ever be, a model.  My face hurt from smiling so much and when I'm in photos alone, it's completely awkward for me.  I'm not sure what to do with my hands or how to stand... should I lean over, cross my arms, in the pockets, at my side... phew, it's exhausting.  But I have to say that Chris spent 3 hours with us walking all over Stone Mountain to find the perfect locations for pictures, the perfect lighting, the perfect colors, etc.  He bent over backwards for us, literally.  There were quite a few times I thought we were going to have to fish him and his very expensive camera out of the small creek flowing beside the grist mill.  Fancy acrobatics aside, we all ended up leaving completely dry, and mostly clean, save for the few leaves and blades of grass from laying on the ground. 

After the photo session, everyday I was religiously checking my email and his website to see if our pictures were uploaded yet, and sadly they weren't.  Finally, today, I got an email from Chris saying he had written a quick blog post and included some of our photos on his site.  <<Insert completely appropriate and not at all drawn out excited and happy squeal here.>> 

So I know you are all dying to see them, as I was, so here they are!!  Let me just post a few of my favorites here.  Actually...who am I kidding, they're all my favorites!  Needless to say, we are REALLY happy with our choice of photographer for the wedding.  He's a great guy and does fantastic work.  Highly recommend him!

On to the photos!  All photos below are taken from Christopher Helm's blog:  athensweddingblog.com

Who knew we could look this good?  Love them. 

Guest List: It keeps growing, and growing, and growing...

Our originial thoughts were to have a medium-ish wedding with 125-150 of our closest friends and family.  We are quickly discovering that this is easier said than done.  We compiled a list of friends, family and friends of our family and that list, with guests, totalled over 300.  Uhh, holy guest overload batman!  As much as I would LOVE to invite anyone and everyone who I've ever said hi to, weddings are crazy expensive, so we had to make some cuts.  A good rule of thumb I heard was that weddings usually cost about $100 per person.  So if there's a person on your list that you wouldn't hand $100 to, then don't invite them.  So we got the guest list cut down to about 200 using this rule.  Pretty good huh?  Yeah, that's what we thought too.

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We're having a "destination wedding."  Not for us, but for pretty much everyone else.  My family is mostly in Pennsylvania and Florida, with a few outliers.  K's family is mostly in Michigan, again with a few outliers.  So Atlanta is quite a distance from most of those places.  So we're very aware that many of our invited guests will not be able to attend.  But as we've been planning and our engagement and subsequent setting of the date was announced in church, on facebook, and via word of mouth, we had a lot of unexpected people expecting invites.  We attend a small church here with maybe 50 attendees on a good Sunday, but we only included the people we're closest with on the guest list.  But how do you explain to someone that you're inviting about half the church and they aren't in that half?  Hmm.. yeah.  I'm not sure how to do it either.  So, needless to say, the guest list has been quickly expanding. 

I'm still really surprised at some of the questions that we've been getting.  I mean, honestly.  I can't ever imagine asking someone these questions. 

"When's the wedding?  We need to know because we have other things going on in October and we'll need to plan around your wedding."

"Send me an invite!"

"When's the wedding?  I'll put it on my calendar right now!" 

"Am I invited?"

"I want to be a bridesmaid!"

And this one didn't happen to me, but to a friend of mine that just got married:

"Can I bring 2 friends to your wedding this Saturday because they're staying over my house on Friday night and it'll be much easier?"

Wow... just... wow. 

But, in any event, I think we're past the whole, "Would I give this person $100?" thing.  We don't want any hurt feelings and we figure that at this point, with our 220 invitees, we might still be under our 150 mark anyway.  But even if we're not, it's just money.  And it's not worth it to us to hurt someone who is relatively close to us by not having them on the list. 

Just Say No

All kinds of controversial topics come up when you start planning a wedding.  Pretty much anything is fair game, and people feel free to ask questions that, at any other time, would be completely inappropriate.  Personally, I think they are still inappropriate, but since I've been asked some of these questions on multiple occasions, I'm guessing others would disagree. 

Last week, I was walking down the hall at work with a friend and she mentioned in passing that we should definitely have a prenup.  I did a double-take as the conversation went on.  It went a little something like this: 

Friend:  You should definitely have a prenup.
Me:  Umm.. what?
Friend:  It's so important, I personaly wouldn't get married without one.  I'm definitely going to have one. 
Me:  Oh. 
Friend:  Are you going to have one?
Me:  Well, no.  We're not. 
Friend:  Really?!?  Why not?  I can't imagine not having one. 
Me:  Well, in my opinion, if you have one, you are walking down the aisle with the expectation that your marriage won't last. 
Friend:  Well, I understand what you're saying, but I just would feel so much better having one.

Now, this friend is single, which doesn't mean she doesn't know what she wants for her future, but she's a long way away from having this discussion or making this decision with her actual future spouse.  I know that a lot of people choose to have a prenup, and I'm not saying one way is better than the other.  I'm just saying that, for us, it's not happening.  I know, I know.  No one walks down the aisle expecting that the marriage won't last, and in reality, only about 50% of them actually do.  It makes sense to protect yourselves in the event that it happens.  But I don't want to start off our marriage on that foot.  I want us to go into this knowing that we'll be together forever and we'll never need to carry out the terms of a prenuptial agreement.  Besides, the only thing we'd be protecting is our debt since we've both been in school most of our lives, so it's not exactly like we have family fortunes to protect.  Our marriage is going from each of use being in the red to the two of us being even more in the red.  Not exactly something worth protecting. 

So, anyway, when it comes to a prenup, we're of the "Just say No" opinion.  Thoughts?