I'm It!

So Nikki over at The Fashionable Wife tagged me in this question game that's been making the rounds. Hopefully this will alleviate the spectacular boredom of waiting until Nov 1st WHEN WE CLOSE ON OUR FIRST HOUSE!

1. What is your favorite book?

I have about 50. I can't help it.

-Favorite Sci-Fi book: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Best surprise ending EVER. And there's a movie coming out Card is writing the screen play!

-Favorite Romance: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. And Pride and Prejudice and Northanger Abbey, both by Jane Austen. Oh and Like Water for Chocolate.

-Favorite Scary book: The Stand by Stephen King, also The Shining and his collection of short stories, Skeleton Crew.

Misc: Anything by Dr. Crossan and Dr. Borg. Anything Pearl S. Buck writes, especially Imperial Woman.

2. How did you meet your significant other:

He was assistant coaching my little sister's cross country team, and I spotted his hot self at the state meet. I facebooked him and 6 months later we were dating!

3. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?

Prague by myself. London with my sisters, Fiji with my husband.

4. What is your favorite thing to do in your spare time?

I love thrift store browsing. I love to sew and quilt, and I never get tired of books.

5. If you didn't have to worry about money, what would be your dream job?

I would love to organize events for the Alzheimer's Association. Sewing or quilting would be a fun job too.

6. What is one thing that never fails to make you feel better after a long or hard day?

Ryan giving me a shoulder rub or making me dinner. And a successful shopping expedition is always good therapy!

7. What is your favorite thing to cook or bake? Or, what is your best recipe?

I have a tiramisu layer cake recipe that absolutely kills.

8. What is your favorite thing in your closet?

I have a black dress from Banana Republic with a ruffled neckline that makes me feel like a million bucks.

So who's it next? I'm tagging...

Mrs. T at 99 + Forever

Kristy at I'm Going to Marry You Someday

Tenille at 9 Years in the Making

Buhdoop!

So ladies, if you have a few minutes....

What was your favorite moment from your wedding? The one where you think of it and feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

Do you sing in the shower or in your car when no one's around? What's your favorite song to belt out?

Flats or heels?

How long do you want to wait to have kids, if you're planning on having them at all? No judgment meant in the least, just curious what other people's time lines are!

How many nights a week do you and/or your partner cook?

If you could change 1 thing personality trait about yourself, what would it be? (I would 100% change my grudge-holding tendency)

End of the Road

Well, ladies (and gentlemen?), this is it. I'm leaving for St. Louis after work today to kick off the wedding weekend. It feels like we've been planning this for forever, but then it feels like it crept up on us so quickly! I have Friday and Monday off, and Monday I have some really exciting stuff I have been dying to tell you all but can't until after the wedding. I'll fill you in on the honeymoon then.

Source

This wedding planning process has not always been fun, and it has been 100x more difficult than I ever thought it would be. Job stress + a long distance relationship + wedding planning was a pretty wicked combo...but with all of that being said, I am very thankful that we had the kind of engagement that we had. I learned and grew so much, and it wasn't even a little bit easy. Learning how to fight, argue and disagree with Ryan in a respectful and loving way was hard; but I am completely positive that the conflict resolution skills we hammered out between the 2 of us will come in handy. Growth does not feel good, and parts of the engagement did not.

Parts of it did feel really good though. Seeing how happy my family is for me, that I've found someone who loves me so much, and seeing how happy Ryan's family is that he found someone who loves him so much has been amazing. Ryan's family has welcomed me in like one of their own, and so many people have offered their help and support.

Just like you all have. I am absolutely positive that we would not be having the wedding we're having without the blogging community. Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for reading, commenting, and putting up with all my crazy. You have truly added a whole new dimension to wedding planning, and I am so grateful for that.

I feel so ready for this. And I'm so, so over the moon happy.

P*ssed Off Bride

Remember P*ssed Off Bride? The one place where you can let all of your frustrations and anger out 100% anonymously? Kelly and I are in need to submissions, so if you have anything at all you'd like to get off of your chest, please please please send it in to pissedoffbride @ hotmail [dot] com. It can be anything, from the checker at Target who said something nasty about your ring to the relatives who RSVP'd yes and then never showed. We would love to hear from you, and we promise to never tell who wrote it!

Threads Remembered Update!

Remember when I did that kick *ss giveaway a while back for my aunt and cousin's new company, Threads Remembered? Threads Remembered takes clothing and turns them in to pillows that make wonderful keep sakes. My fam is doing some pretty amazing things and they make killer ring bearer pillows, so go check them out!

Stephanie was the lucky winner, and she is kind enough to keep us posted as a favorite article of clothing is redone into a keepsake pillow!

Stephanie of The Life of a Husband and a Wife and I Do at the Zoo was the lucky winner, and she was kind enough to drop me a line telling me where she's at in the pillow-making process. Stephanie says:

I'm a HUGE slacker, what can I say?! I'm sorry...despite my less than stellar skills at actually picking an item, photographing said item (seriously, it's been hanging in my closet all picked out for about a month now) and packaging it up to mail off to Stacy's aunt and cousin...whew, I'm less than stellar at a lot, huh!?...I am UBER pumped about this prize!!!!!

After much deliberation with the hubby, we decided against the ideas of: my wedding gown, my mom's wedding gown, a Dallas Cowboy jersey, my baby blanket, an item of my mom's clothing...and we picked something that was sentimental just to us.

A classic Old Navy button up teal shirt of my hubby's from their late winter/early spring 2006 collection.


You see, we picked this item because it means so much to both of us. We hope to use it to decorate our future baby's nursery one day, but in the meantime the fabulous pocket pillow will live in our bedroom as a reminder of where we started.

I bought said shirt for hubby way back in January 2006. I was OBSESSED with that fabulous shade of aqua at the time and bought him a shirt and me a sweater to match. Yup. Be glad you weren't my boyfriend! What's even worse, we'd only been dating since September 2005. I'm an all in or all out kinda gal! My purchases were intentional so we could be matchy-matchy on our First Valentine's Day. Go ahead, gag some more, its ok...Our First Valetine's Day as an Official Couple getting ready to move from VA to IN on our own together was a trip to Philly to see my FAVE, the Piano Man himself, Billy Joel.


We drove up to Philly and had an amazingly romantic weekend together - despite our car breaking down and being towed to the closet Nissan dealership in NJ and despite the BLIZZARD that hit Philly that weekend. In all seriousness, we fell more in love that weekend and knew we'd get through anything together. We explored downtown, ate delicious food, walked around the zoo and aquarium and capped the weekend with Billy's concert. Its a memory that will never fade. So, we picked this shirt to be made into something we can both catch a glimpse of daily and remember our beginning.

Hubby's shirt is all packed up and has been dropped off at UPS en route to Stacy's fam who will be working their imaginations and sewing magic to create a one of a kind future family heirloom for moi.

THANK YOU STACY and AUNT T and COUSIN S!!!!!!!

And THANK YOU Stephanie for taking a moment out of your crazy busy life to keep us posted...I know I am excited to see how it turns out! And be sure to go over and say hi to Stephanie at The Life of a Husband and a Wife. And she even took the time to put a nice note...love people like that, don't you? Stephanie I think the world needs more of you!

Give Away

Alternative Wife has a pretty sweet giveaway going on right here!

Bloggity-Blog

Looking for a new, fresh faced, up-and-coming wedding blogger to while away those work hours with? Worry not, I have just the ticket! My friend Melissa is getting married in November and her Lenten resolution is to blog more. Woohoo! She just put together a recipe book for a recipe-themed bridal shower, it is too cute, you've got to check it out. Stop by and see her!

And the winner is....

Stephanie, of I Do at the Zoo and the Life of a Husband and a Wife!

So what did Stephanie win, you may ask? She wins a pillow valued from $45-$55 from my aunt and cousin's company, Threads Remembered.



Threads Remembered takes clothing, coats, jerseys, handkerchiefs, scarves...whatever you can dream up and turns them in to pillows. They make wonderful keepsakes, and the work is really beautiful. Stephanie, please tell us how your pillow turns out, and congratulations!

If any of you lovely readers would like a pillow of your very own, contact my aunt and cousin at teresa@threadsremembered.com or sarah@threadsrembered.com, they'll take good care of you. To see more of what Threads Remembered has to offer, check out their look book here.

Thank you to everyone who entered and said such nice things!

Last Chance!

Happy Friday ladies and gentleman! I know that 1 guy is reading this (hey Zach!) and we're all about being inclusive here.

Today is your last chance to enter the Threads Remembered Giveaway I posted about on Monday. You can win a pillow made out of your grandmother's handkerchief, mom's wedding dress, dad's button down shirt, or whatever else you can dream up. My Aunt Teresa and my cousin Sarah started the company, and I immediately thought of you all when they told me about it. I think these would make great keepsakes and really amazing ring bearer's pillows. Check out Monday's post for details on how to enter, you have until tonight at midnight to get your entries in. I'll randomly select a winner and announce the lucky person on Monday!

Best of luck and have a lovely weekend, I hope it's pretty where you are!

Kick-*ss Giveaway

Good morning friends! Yesterday I told you I have an amazing giveaway, so here goes!

Threads Remembered is a company that my Aunt Teresa (my aunt who threw me that beautiful shower 2 weeks ago) and my cousin Sarah are starting. Threads Remembered is a service that turns old clothing into keepsakes in the form of pillows.
Now Ryan and I aren't having a ring bearer, but I think that these would make the most perfect ring bearer pillows. I know that all over blog land, women are trying to infuse elements of loved ones into their wedding, and this is just a brilliant way to do it. You could have a pillow made out of your mom or grandma's wedding dress, or out of your dad's button down shirt, or your great grandmother's handkerchief...the possibilities are endless. So whenever Aunt Teresa and Sarah mentioned this company they were starting, I instantly thought of you lovely readers! Enough talk, here are some examples of pillows they've made:


This is a scarf that was turned into a pillow.


My aunt said that the pillow in the upper right hand corner was a very old handkerchief.



This was a bridesmaid's dress turned into a pillow....this one is my favorite, what they did with the buttons is so clever!


My aunt made pillows out of my grandpa's shirts that looked just like this.

Even if you're already married, a keepsake like this would be great around the house...I'm thinking reading nook.

Keep in mind that these pictures are only suggestions, let your imagination run wild. I'd love to see one made out of ties.

So, my aunt and my cousin are offering to give away a pillow valued from $45-$55 to you lovely ladies (and gents?). Just to give you an example of price, the button up shirt pillow costs $50, the dress pillow runs $60 and the scarf or handkerchief pillow is $45.

You can view the full look book here (it takes just a second to load).

Here's how to enter:
--Leave me a comment and tell me what kind a pillow you would have made if you win!

--For an additional entry, blog about this giveaway and post a comment with the link telling me what kind of a pillow you would like to have made

--Tweet about Threads Remembered and the giveaway for another entry (let me know you tweeted...Twitter scares the crap out of me, but Pugs and I tweet for our other blog and she's easing me into it!)

You have until Friday at midnight (central time) to enter, and I'll assign numbers to entries and pick a winner with that random number thing.

Good luck, and if you have any questions let me know! You can contact Threads Remembered at teresa@threadsremembered.com or sarah@threadsremembered.com

Just another Manic Monday....

Hey guys, I hope you all had a kick-*ss weekend!

2 things: I spoke to a DJ today. He was unfortunately booked for our wedding date, but he was nice enough to recommend several other St. Louis DJ's and send me a link to everything you need to know when hiring a DJ. I thought some of you lovely ladies (and gents?) might be interested, you can find the article here.

2nd thing: I have an amazing giveaway coming up this week. It's something I've never seen before in the wedding blogosphere, and I think you all are going to love it. So put your giveaway pants on and get ready!

Source

It's much, much better than a mystery lunch!

New Things

So Miss Pugs and I have had a little project in the works for a week or so now. All the comments I got on my Anonymity post really got me thinking...and now the lovely Miss Pugs and I are happily facilitating a site where you can post, in a letter format, about something in the wedding planning process that makes you angry or upset. *Hint hint, the David's Bridal post might be yours truly!* If you have any thing you'd like to get off of your chest in an anonymous fashion, send Miss Pugs and I a submission, we promise to publish it 100% anonymously (and often hilariously)! Check out Pissed Off Bride to see what we're talking about!

A serious case of the wants

I want to win this giveway so, so badly. Cross your fingers for me!

For the Bibliophile

Sara is hosting an amazing giveaway, go enter for your chance at some good books!

Anonymity

If I could do this blog thing all over again (and I very might after the nuptials), I would blog anonymously.

Source

There is stuff I do not get into on this blog, because I have family members who occasionally stop by this little corner of the Internet. If I blogged anonymously, I would get into it. I don't know if that's a good thing - me unloading isn't pretty - but there is stuff I leave out and subjects I avoid.

I still have a (mostly) accurate journal of my wedding planning with this blog, and the friendships I have made with you wonderful readers are invaluable to me. I have no idea if those friendships would be any less/more if I blogged under a pseudonym (I cannot believe I spelled that right the first time!). I haven't spent much time considering the ethics of blogging under a pseudonym, but I don't see much wrong with it (unless you're using anonymity to really hurt someone). Maybe I need to think about it more.

This is really more of a think-it-through-as-I-type-it-out post, I suppose, but I'd love to know what you think, because I know there are some anonymous bloggers out there. So tell me, do you blog publicly or privately? Have you had to hold back on your blog? Are you glad you blog anonymously?

Housekeeping

Courtesy of Shabby Blogs and my friend Jake, the blog has a bit of a new look. I love it! I've had the hardest time finding a blog template with enough white space for my taste, but it turns out that a pretty header does the trick!

I was just rocking out to this at work on Pandora while I write a script for an Ohio show and I had to share....




Oh my gosh I love it! I still want to be just like Belle, not going to lie. I know, Disney has horrible female stereotypes, but I was quite the bookworm when I was little (still am) and I loved Belle for it.

Just wanted to thank everyone for sharing what they think about the Bee. It is such a revered institution, and it seems like you only hear about how great it is....so it's pretty amazing to hear that other women out there feel the same way.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was rejected as a Bee blogger, but this was months ago, and I didn't write today's post in anger about it. I happily continued to read the Bee for months after I was rejected, and me unsubscribing had nothing to do with being rejected.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion ladies! Also, Bowie Bride is pretty much a genius and has her own little hive in the works, you all should go check it out!

Ok, and if I'm going to be 100% honest with you all, when my sister Alli and I were little we had a tape of Beauty and the Beast and whenever we acted out the movie, I always made her be the 3 girls who were in love with Gaston. I'm sorry Alli, it would not have killed me to let you be Belle at least once!

I Did It!

I unsubscribed from Weddingbee.

Here's why:

If I let a day go by without reading it, there would be so many posts piled up that I felt overwhelmed.

I have been disappointed in the bee bloggers who start blogging and then blog again a month later...or the bee's who never finish their wedding recaps. I hate getting invested in someone's story only to be left hanging. It also feels that the weddings they've been featuring lately are very, very similar, and there isn't very much inspiration to pull from them anymore.

My addiction

Most importantly, it was making me lose perspective in a big way. All of those details seem kind of silly to me, and inauthentic. (I'm not talking about every bee blogger by any means, FYI, there are some kick-*ss writers on that site who have amazing weddings). I feel like I've been focusing on stupid, stupid things lately, and it's making me completely burnt out on this wedding. The stuff I should be excited to do, like crafting our ceremony and writing my vows, I don't feel like doing because I've wasted all this energy on whether we should have table numbers or not, etc.

Once again, I am not talking about 100% of the bee bloggers on that site...just the majority of them. There are some standouts that I will miss, and I might go back and read how Mrs. Cowboy Boot's reception turned out, but that will be about it.

I lost my fascination with the boards about a month ago when it felt like every other post was from one of the waiting girls (I know how it feels to want to be engaged so badly, but some of their stories are kind of frightening!) and there was an offensive post on gay marriage.

I don't want to sound like I'm knocking anyone's decision to read the site, it's an incredible resource. I am just trying to narrow my focus, that's all!

Do you read the bee?

Time Out

I'm going to take a bit of a break.

I really enjoy blogging 5 days a week, but I think that you all deserve something interesting to read about at the same time. I need to recharge, not write for a few days. I write for a living (real estate TV shows, not exciting but writing nonetheless) and I'm feeling really tapped out lately.



I'm also thinking about taking the blog in a bit of a new direction. I've been writing almost exclusively about weddings lately and it's kind of driving me nuts. I'm afraid that I have weddings on the brain way, way too much lately. I realized this on Friday night, when Ryan was doing a silly dance to a Youtube song and I interrupted him to show him a potential wedding first dance song. What a downer, right? I don't want to be that girl who only talks about her wedding, and who feels empty after it's over. I think that by constantly thinking of wedding related blog post ideas, it's making me see anything and try to relate it to weddings. I even do it when I'm running, which is supposed to be my mental downtime!

So from here on out, you'll be hearing lots more about running, recipes, books I've been reading, and craft projects I want to try my hand at. 75% of this blog will still be wedding related, but I think I'm suffering from trying to make it 100% wedding related. Because 100% of my life isn't wedding planning, and I don't want it to be.

I hope you'll stick around for the ride...I so enjoy and appreciate all of you, more than I could ever say.

Happy Thanksgiving, and have a lovely break! I'll be back on Monday with a book I just finished and hopefully my finished garter!

Over the Top

Thanks to Katie for passing this on to me!


I'm going to share it with Miss Mojito, Kristy, Miss Pug, Buhdoop, LauraLou, and Chocolate Lover.

Can I just say how much I love following along on everyone's journey? I am blown away by the kick*ss women I've "met," and I love knowing that if I ever travel to Indiana then I can call up Miss Pug, or if I go to Vancouver I can give Chocolate Lover a ring! So thank you to everyone who reads and comments and shares, you all have impacted my wedding planning experience in ways I never thought possible. We've got ourselves an amazing circle, don't we?

Aw, Shucks....

ChocolateLover is altogether too good to me!


I am supposed to detail 5 things I am obsessed with and then pass the award on to 5 other bloggers, so here goes:

1. I am obsessed with learning about different religions, they are endlessly fascinating to me.
2. I am obsessed with J Crew.
3. I am obsessed with reading, I love it.
4. Also obsessed with pashmina scarves...I have lots.
5. Obsessed with....getting a good deal. I never pay full price!

And now to pass this on to 5 fab blogs...

Gator Bride, BuhDoop, I'm Gonna Marry You Someday, With This Ring I Thee Blog, and Miss Pug!