My Wedding on a Budget: 59 Days to Go!

Possession of the Dress!
It's ready! The alterations on my dress were complete, so I went by and tried it on (fits perfectly) and had Jo come with me so she learn the tricks of bustling it and I brought it on home! So it will hang at Greystone until the big day at this point! The longer I have it and the more I see it the more excited I am to wear it and the more I'm sure I picked just the right dress!

I checked in on the girls' dresses while I was there and had to do some prodding to remind them to get on ordering the dresses! I thought Valerie was the only one left, due to the adjusting post-pregnancy size, but no. Kelli and Holly are the only ones who have dresses so far!

I also stopped by Plato's Closet (looking for some shoes) but instead spent $20 and got 4 dresses I can wear for showers and the honeymoon. Love, love, love good deals!

My Wedding on a Budget: 60 Days To Go!

Off for the Holiday: Valerie-Rita Day

There was no time for wedding planning today, besides, you're supposed to take off for holidays, right? August 9 is mine and Valerie's most important holiday (yes, we have more than one self-instated holidays). Since the summer we met in 2003 we have never not seen each other on August 9. The first 2 years were by chance and the third year was luck (we had scheduled to work in Virginia Beach together prior to thinking about the date). Since then it has been planned and sometimes nearly forced. (For example, the year Kelli and Brandon got married in Richmond and I was in the wedding. There was no chance until I ended up going back to Holly's in Lexington to stay that night and we opted to hit the bars so I called Valerie and she met us out!) It gets harder as we get older but we nearly forgot this year. Mainly because time is moving so fast! It would have been tragic if in a week or two we realized we'd not even thought about it. It was a great evening of chit-chat. Crazy yet amazing where our lives are... discussing new life with a baby for her and my soon-to-be married life!

My Wedding on a Budget: 61 Days to Go!

Little Purple Dresses: The Flower Girl
I love that Aunt Janet gets excited about these kinds of things! I talked with her at the reunion this weekend about Julianna's flower girl dress. I told her I didn't want to necessarily do the standard white flower girl dress. I feel like, as a little girl, having something purple would be much more fun! I told her I'd research and bring her a few ideas at Sunday's shower. Today, though, she sent me about 4 emails after doing her own research. At first she didn't remember what the material in the other dresses was (chiffon) but after I reminded her she found a VERY cute one. I really, really like it and I'm pretty sure she does as well. My ONLY hesitation is that it is a dark purple--which I'm fine with; I just don't want it to clash in any way with the other "lapis" purple dresses of Rachel and Valerie. However, the only purple I could really go with that wouldn't possibly clash with one of the other colors would be a lilac purple, which I'd been steering clear of due to it being very "springy". In the end, though, the flowing purple one seems great for fall and is just adorable so I'll probably go with it (top left image). The one below it is nearly identical. The bottom right has some shiny satin material up top which throws it off a bit.

Aah... decision, decisions!
TWO MONTHS exactly!

My Wedding on a Budget: 62 Days to Go!

Invitations: Almost there!
It was a major invitation day! I knew it would take some time but I didn't think of it taking almost a whole day. (Then again, after a late return from Ohio last night, we slept in pretty darn late and lazed around before getting going on much of anything today.)

So the invitations consisted of first lining up and making sure all of the Invites, RSVPs and inserts printed out right. Then we printed the invites... Then Mom printed the RSVPs while I stamped the RSVP envelopes. I tried to do the paper cutting of the giant 12x12 green sheets we had to cut into 6 4x6 sheets for the directions and hotel info. Yeah, I've never been so hot with a paper cutter. So I did that for like...two cards and got fired and Mom took over while I started to stamp the return address labels. Next Mom printed out the green sheets and then Jon came in and helped out with the paper cutting.

We took a dinner break and then came back later with the intention to stuff them all...but we didn't get quite through. Turns out we hadn't realized that the little ribbons that tie around the whole dealy are not even tied yet...so that was a bit of a slow down. So Jon and I put together everything else with each envelope while Mom tied the bows. We stopped on about a third of them at about 10. She's going to continue with the bows the next few nights and hopefully we can finish them up at the end of the week so she'll be happy and be true to her word and have them out the second week of August!

My Wedding on a Budget: 63 Days to Go!

My First Wedding Shower!
Rachel took on organizing my first shower,but it we quickly learned it should have never been titled a shower since she expected men to come as well. The point of it was to give any of the Rousculp/King/Gill side of the family the chance to congratulate the two of us especially considering many of them might not make it to the wedding. Jon was a real sport about it when he heard it was a "couples shower" but it wasn't even a really big to-do anyway. Debra did a beautiful job of opening up their house to host (since the actual family reunion was up the street at Uncle David's). There were a few snacks and drinks. She even made me one of the fun, cool towel cake displays as her gift. Rachel put a fun game together for us. She knows I am not a big fan of shower games, but this e played the newlywed game but all married couples plus us got to play. Seth was our game show host, and as Deutsch tends to do, he played it up and did well. The best question for us had to be "Your significant other hires a beautiful blond secretary. What do you do?" We, the ladies, had to write out an answer and then the men had to say what they though our answer was. I'm not sure if anyone else got that one right but we sure did! Thanks to my silly dream I had about 2 months into our relationship when a waitress licked on his fingers and I poked her eyes out for it! So When Jon answered, "She'd tell me 'No finger sucking.'" Everyone looked at him funny until I turned over my paper which read, "I'd tell him not to let her lick his fingers." That just lead to lots of laughter and the need to explain. It was a fun first shower and a great chance to get some hugs of congratulations and laughs with family I don't see enough.

I saw KK at the Seitz reunion (Also going on today in Ohio.) She's going to make some trial flowers this week to bring to the Louisville shower next week to decide if she can make the sashes for her and Michelle. I also saw Janet and Julianna there, so I talked with Aunt Janet about what type of dress I'd like Julianna to wear. I'm going to bring her some ideas also to the shower next weekend.

Jon and I did some reading during our car rides in order to move closer to choosing our readings. Usually readings just lead to discussions on God, love and life and how they all fit together. I could find deep meaning in so many or most of the readings. I would love to have one that, for anyone who is listening that day, they really hear what we are all about.