suit up!

Jesse found his wedding suit last weekend! The boy has at least three suits in his closet, but all are hand-me-downs that he has to rig with a belt to keep from falling off him. We figured the wedding would be a good excuse for him to buy a suit that actually fit. He totally lucked out. A men's clothing shop in the mall was going out of business, so he found an fantastic black BCBG for a fraction of its original price (It used to be $800.00!). Best of all, it fits him like a glove. For those of you who've met Jesse, you know that he's kinda a slender guy, so he'd expected any suit he found to still need some pretty drastic doctoring. But this one only needs the trouser legs hemmed an inch! yay.

The tie he's wearing is just a stand-in (it's actually navy instead of black), but I like the pattern on it. I told him to give me his best "male model" face. He just smirked at that request, but I think he looks pretty debonair anyway.

shoes

I found my shoes over the weekend, which means that next time I go to Lititz I can schedule an appointment to finally get my dress altered - yay! They met most of my wedding shoe criteria - 3 inch heels (so I don't have to stand on tip toes to kiss Jesse), silver instead of white (better chance of re-wearing after the wedding), and on sale! I'd been looking for wedge heels, but these are at least thicker - stilettos are the death of me - and have an ankle strap so they won't fall off. Seriously I'm that clumsy. Plus, they remind of shoes that Ginger Rogers would have worn or Dorothy's shoes from the original L. Frank Baum version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which were silver instead of ruby. Both are huge positives in my book.

flowers

I know it's been a while since we've updated, so hopefully this pretty post will make up for our bad blogging skills. We're thinking of buying our flowers wholesale and d.i.y-ing the centerpieces and bouquets. I've heard some people complain about what a nightmare it is to put together their own flowers the day before the wedding, but since we're keeping it simple with only two bouquets and no boutonnieres or corsages, I think we'll be able to handle it (of course I always think that.....friends and family be prepared to be put to work).

Also, our centerpiece idea is so basic that hopefully even we won't be able to foul it up too much. We just need to start collecting tiny jars and vases (luckily Jesse's folks already have a pretty fair collection and we've got tons of thrift stores nearby). Here's what we have in mind:

(Click to enlarge)

And we're thinking about using flowers like the ones below, along with dahlias (the flowers in the furthest right photo above). If anyone knows what kind of flowers are in the furthest left photo below, please let me know! Are they just a variety of garden roses or something else? I love the peach and pink together. P.s - wedding planning is an awesome crash course in botany. I 've learned more flower names, locations and seasonal varieties in the last couple of months than in my entire 25 years prior.

From Left: ??, poppies, ranunculus, roses

As far as bouquets, I'm thinking monochromatic, hand-tied, and as devoid of extra greenery and babies breath as possible. My favorite idea is to use either one or three dinner plate dahlias (the super gigantic pink flower in the top set of photos - also comes in white, yellow and light pink!), but I'm not sure how hard they are to come by. When I make up my mind, I'll just have to dress up our blog with more photos of flowers!

Guest Info: The Hotels of Lititz, Pa

Lititz has three different hotels that are close to our ceremony and reception sites. It doesn't look like we will be able to get any special deals for blocks of rooms. As of now, all of the hotels have plenty of space for July 11th and 12th, but they will start filling up as next Spring and Summer approach.

The Historic General Sutter Inn is a restaurant and hotel in the center of Lititz, right at the town square. It is about two blocks from the ceremony site. We have had many family members and friends stay here over the years and they always praise the hotel's service and accommodations. They recently refinished and updated their rooms. It is a little more expensive than the other two hotels for a room with two doubles, but they do have smaller rooms that are cheaper. The price difference isn't too drastic, and is worth the extra money in my mind. You can see pictures of each room (they are all unique) on their website.

http://www.generalsutterinn.com/
(there is music on this website that is a little annoying, go to the bottom of the page to turn it off)


The Warwick Inn is about 5 minutes north of town. It is right off of the main road running through Lititz, so it would be easy to get to the ceremony site from the hotel. I visited the hotel last week. It was clean and cozy. The person at the front desk was very helpful and happy to show me around. The rooms look like hotel rooms. Nothing too shocking. They were very clean and in great condition. These rooms would be a little cheaper than the General Sutter on average. We had some relatives visit us last year and they stayed at the Warwick Inn. They were happy with their stay. The Warwick Inn offers discounts for AAA and AARP members

http://www.warwickinnpa.com/index.htm



There is a Holiday Inn Express located 5 minutes south of town. Again, this hotel is right off of the main road that runs through town, so it would be easy to get to the ceremony site from there. It is only a couple of years old. I have not talked to anyone directly who has stayed there, but my mom has heard that it is nice. The prices are about the same as the Warwick Inn's prices. The Holiday Inn offers discounts for AAA and AARP members. They also have an indoor pool.

http://www.hiexpress.com

Guest Info: Airport Recommendations

This is my first of two posts for our wedding guests regarding travel information. For anyone flying in to Lititz, you have three possible airports to choose from:

Harrisburg International Airport is the closest (about 45 minutes away) from Lititz in the town of Harrisburg, Pa.

Philadelphia International Airport is about 1.5 -2 hours away from Lititz, but offers a larger selection of airlines (so possibly cheaper flights).

Baltimore/Washington International Airport is also about about 1.5 - 2 hours away with a larger selection of airlines.

And, on a side note, Lititz actually has it's own airport, The Lancaster Airport, but it's very tiny and only used for very small planes. Flights would probably be much more expensive here, but I'll list it just in case.

I'll post back very shortly with my hotel information and recommendations.

Inspiration Board

A while back, I posted several wedding "inspiration boards" created by other brides-to-be that captured the mood Jesse and I had in mind for our wedding. At the end of the post I mentioned that some day I would probably give in and make my own board. Well, my friend, that day has come!

(click on image to enlarge)

I know, I know, my mood board is gargantuan compared to the earlier ones I wrote about, but we still have so many things to decide on and pick out that I wasn't ready to streamline it just yet. Although we won't have every exact thing from the board at our wedding or reception, I think over all it personifies the mood we're trying to go for - semi-formal, fun, summer-y, a little bit vintage and a little bit modern (but NOT rustic or country). For any upcoming bride, I would definitely recommend creating an inspiration board. From picking flowers, to bridesmaid dresses, to tablecloths, it's helpful to have a visual reference to make sure everything ties in together.

Oh, and the photo of the tandem bike (bottom row, 2nd from L) isn't completely out of place - we actually have access to one (a red one!) and may try to make it our getaway vehicle!

Bridesmaid dresses

Like I promised, here are the actual dresses that I e-mailed to Andrea as bridesmaid dress suggestions. (Click on the image to enlarge)

1st row: jenny yoo, priscilla of boston, david's bridal
2nd row: j.crew, target, j.crew
3rd row: j.crew, simple silhouettes (2), thread design, j.crew

These are all dresses that I really like and seem to fit the semi-formal, summer garden party tone that we're trying to set. They also seem to match Andrea's more demure, classic sense of style much better than the frothy confections from my last post and they're simple enough to hopefully be re-wearable in the future.

She won't actually be picking one of these exact dresses, but finding one on her own that fits a similar style. She may even have her MIL (mother-in-law in bridal blog speak) sew one from a pattern. That's why I put the four color blocks at the bottom, I picked these dresses based on their style rather than color. I'd prefer her to find a dress in one of the four shades of pink (like the ones in the 2nd row, minus the orange dress, or the middle three in the 3rd row). Our colors really aren't "blush and bashful"*, but a range of pinks, peaches, and yellows - I just thought pink would look best with Andrea's coloring and next to my white dress and Jesse's black/dark grey suit in photos. If she despises pink, yellow (like two on top right) is my second choice.

So, let me know what you think, and we'll see how close Andrea's dress looks to any of these ten months from now.

* if you do not know this quote, get thee to your local video store and rent Steel Magnolias immediately!

If I were my own bridesmaid....

.....I would so wear one of these dresses.

dresses l to r: unknown origin, anthropologie, betsey johnson

I'm not even joking. Jesse can attest to the fact that a few articles of clothing in my closet definitely resemble costumes more than every day wear. And with one of these, I could add a "50's party dress", "mod/sailor/pinafore dress" or "dress made for a 5 year old princess" to my growing collection. Wearing "fun" clothes puts me in a good mood all day. And these three dresses would make me feel truly divine.

But, of course, I will not be my own bridesmaid. I've asked my sister, Andrea, to stand beside me and she agreed on the one condition that I not ask her to wear an ugly dress - and I'm pretty sure she would think these were a trio of ugly dresses. Since Andrea will be my only bridesmaid, I decided it would be much easier to give her a few color and style suggestions and let her choose a dress on her own. That way, hopefully, she could find something she'd like enough to wear again or if not, at least find something super cheap.

So, this post is merely a teaser. Over the weekend, I'll post the real dresses that I sent her for color and style suggestions. And I promise you won't find a single ruffled, pinafore-d, or big-bowed number in the bunch. ;)

Hey, mister postman bring me a dream....

I should give you fair warning.....this is a post about stamps. Yep, stamps. A microscopic detail of wedding invitation planning that really shouldn't warrant a blog post. I certainly have never given them much thought before. I knew from working on my sister's invitations that the USPS makes wedding-themed stamps, so I just automatically thought "good enough - done". Until the devil, Martha Stewart, and her extreme obsessive compulsive disorder sunk her teeth into me.


Exhibit A in my defense: a spread from her Spring 2007 issue showing the "art" of arranging stamps on an invitation envelope. The Martha even suggests buying vintage stamps off of eBay to coordinate with your colors if the current offerings don't match. Thankfully, my perfectionism has never reached those sisyphean limits. As much as I love all things vintage, I wasn't even tempted...well, maybe a little, but not enough to start looking or anything.....

Other brides use services like zazzle.com to custom design their own stamps that are actually certified by the USPS. But, that costs extra money and my cheapskate tendencies override my perfectionist tendencies every time.

A month ago, though, all the stars aligned for me. On an otherwise average day, as Jesse tossed me a stack of letters, my eyes immediately darted to the top right corner of the top envelope. There rested a beautiful 1 inch x 1 inch square of perfection. Drum roll please! I give you the post office's crowning achievement - the "Beautiful Blooms" collection!

Yeah, I know, completely not worth the hype. But, they fit the exact fun, summery mood of our wedding and coordinate perfectly with our colors! Jesse can't understand my enthusiasm for a detail so microscopic. I think it's just that this one tiny detail fell into my lap perfectly without me having to lift a finger, whereas the rest of the wedding planning has been so complicated. So, to the dear USPS, who I usually curse, I now salute you. Next, we just have to design our invitations....

Tasting at the Barn

We had our sampling at the Barn last weekend in Lancaster following two busy days of teaching. The food was excellent and Randy, our go-to guy there, was very attentive and helpful. We got to try almost all of the foods we had in mind for our brunch reception, as well as a few extras. I even managed to convince myself to taste a couple of foods I typically don't eat. I had to try them for the greater good of our guests. We were pretty stuffed by the time we got to the last two dishes, but managed to each at least nibble a piece of each dish. By the end we felt very full, and very happy with the food... then they brought out the desserts... We didn't really eat too much the rest of the day.
Randy sat down with us for a while afterward and we went over some more of the details. Deanna and I both feel really satisfied with the service, decor, and food, so I think we can now finally declare that our date for the wedding will be July 12, 2008. Yah!

Let me introduce....

......the newest member of our household! We've named him "Someday" for self-explanatory reasons. Jesse bought him from a 25 cent (50 cents thank you very much, she doesn't know how spoiled she is-Jesse) vending machine in our grocery store because he knows how much I want a dog. Yeah, it's not really the same.....but I still like him.


I've decided to keep the plastic egg he came in as his home because it makes him look like a future dog who lives in a space pod. He's joining the other pet Jesse made me:

.....the very cute, but still un-named blue bird.....

and they live on the wall above my desk along with the other inspirational odds and ends. If I take any more of these tiny creatures in, I'll start to have a faux pet menagerie, which is kind of sad and a little creepy. Guess I'll just have to get a real one soon!

p.s. - How come Jesse's not adding any posts? I'm sure he could come up with something slightly more wedding related then my weird fake pets to write about. Hm...me thinks he's left our little blog for his more exciting Turnbull blog. Oh well, as long as I get him for the rest of his life....ha ha ha (evil laugh).

Another wedding for the Turnbulls

Last weekend, Jesse's brother, Dan, married his fiance, Brook, in the backyard of their parents' home. After a whirlwind two weeks of planning, much of the time spent pruning and gilding the backyard, the ceremony went off without a hitch! One caveat of the day was seeing Peter, the pastor who will be officiating our ceremony, perform a really lovely ceremony. So, thanks for the "test drive ", Dan and Brook, now we're even more excited for him to marry us! Here are a two photos from Saturday (click on the images

to enlarge them):

The bride and groom

All of my future in-laws from L to R:
Jesse's Dad, Brook, Will, Dan, Jesse & his super bright tie, and Jesse's Mom

wedding dress - check!

So, what big wedding step did I get accomplished? I bought my wedding dress! Yay! I'm not allowed to post any pictures of it on the blog because Jesse refuses to see it or know any details about it before the wedding date. He's also adamant that he doesn't want to see me at all that day before I walk down the aisle. Well, I guess it's good that one of us is traditional.

I was a little worried when I started looking at wedding dresses in magazines because nothing felt quite like me. I am just NOT into princess ball gowns, loads of beads, appliques, or embroidery. The dresses I admired usually were much more streamlined or modern looking....but they were also usually $3,000 couture designs. What can I say, it just reaffirms my great taste. :)

But, I am just not a $3,000 dress bride, either. So, I planned instead to look for a simple bridesmaid dress in ivory or one of the simple, but elegant dresses from the J. Crew bridal selection. I figured it couldn't hurt in the meantime to try on a few salon gowns, so I stopped by Bridals by Danielle just a couple blocks from our apartment in Philly. My consultant there, Lisa, let me try on tons of bridesmaid dresses and sample gowns and was extremely supportive and encouraging. If you're looking for a wedding dress in Philadelphia, I highly recommend them. They carry tons of high end gowns along with two racks of sample dresses. I narrowed it down to two dresses and brought my friend, Lara, in for a second opinion. I ended up choosing a really elegant silk sample gown that completely felt like "me" and was marked down from $2,000 to $200! It needs to be taken in since it's about two sizes too big, but I already found a seamstress in Lititz, Pa who will do it for a fraction of the salon's price. So, good news all round.

Since I can't post any photos of the dress here, I thought I'd at least leave you with some pictures of some of some gorgeous dresses I love that are completely out of my price range. Luckily, none of these really look like the one I'll be wearing, so I'm not giving anything away. You'll just have to wait until July 12th (probably), like Jesse, to see the dress that I'm making such a big fuss about!

from l to r, dresses designed by: claire pettibone, nicole miller, lela rose

no, we're not in hibernation

Sorry for the long delay in posting. I had some laptop trouble that Jesse fixed at the beginning of the week, plus we've both been busy with work and class planning for the fall semester at MICA.

But, we haven't completely thrown wedding planning to the wind! We've scheduled a menu sampling at our reception site in about three weeks (yum!). During that time, we'll hopefully be able to finalize details at The Barn, which means we'll finally be able to confirm our wedding dates as July 12th. We've also started reviewing our photography choices and possible ceremony musicians, but don't have anything concrete decided yet. I got one BIG planning step out of the way, but it's large enough to merit its own entry, so stay tuned....

Mission: Mood Board

I've known girls who have imagined every little detail of their wedding before they even had anyone to marry. I am NOT one of those girls. So, ever since I got this ring I've been playing extreme catch-up. I'm a very quick study and my current obsession with wedding magazines and wedding blogs has provided me with excellent clift notes on the subject.

My favorite tool: The Mood Board. A mood board (aka inspiration board or storyboard) is a conglomerate of images a bride has been collecting to help her narrow down her vision for her wedding day. They proliferate on wonderful wedding blogs like weddingbee.com and stylemepretty.com (yes, to have a weddingblog you MUST name it something very silly).

Here are some other brides' mood boards that I plan on stealing (I mean borrowing) ideas from to create a fun, summer mood for our little shindig. There are other styles and colors that I've fallen in love with, too, but I think these work best with our location and time of year. And if I do make my own board, I'll definitely post it here.

I don't remember where I found all of these from, but the top was from stylemepretty.com, the second and fourth were from weddingbee.com, and the last was from ohjoy! (click any of them to see larger versions)

green acres is the place for me....

While talking to two friends several months ago about our reception site search in Lancaster County, I actually said the words, "...we're looking everywhere as long as it's not a barn". Nothing against barns, I'm just not a very rustic sorta girl. So, what does my haughtiness get me? You guessed it, our most likely suspect is The Barn at Overlook in Manheim Township (about a 10 min. drive from our ceremony spot in Lititz). Its bathrooms are the two bottom baby blue ones in Jesse's post below.

We really like the high ceilings and exposed lighting and one side is almost completely filled with windows, so it feels very clean and open. And it's not an actual barn, just shaped like one. I just have to get passed the fact that it's right next door to an...eeek....mini golf course. yeah. I just keep telling myself that it'll give kids (and kids at heart) a fun activity to do after the wedding (since it'll end around 4:00) and could provide some fun wedding photos. We'll see.

The barn only had two Saturdays still available for Summer 2008, so we're in middle of reserving July 12th (my grandparents' anniversary!) as our new potential date. As long as our catering tasting goes smoothly and we get all of the logistics worked out, this will probably be our future reception site. Ignore the centerpieces in the photo, I'm already starting to think of decorating ideas that are more fun/summery/contemporary and less rustic/country. But, that's a whole different post.

Finally Getting Some Stuff Done?

Well, Deanna and I have had a pretty crazy month or so. Things are starting to approach normalcy pretty soon, and we may have some wedding plans set by the time things are settled. I scouted out a couple of leads on reception sites last time I was in Lancaster. Deanna checked them out this past week when we were back and liked what she saw. It looks like we will be shifting our date up a month and a half or so due to availability of everything. We will keep everyone updated when things get more finalized. We are excited that things seem like they are finally falling into place.


Pictures of restrooms from different reception sites we have looked at...

Jesse

New Haircut

As soon as it started to get really hot outside, I knew that it was time for my long hair to go. I had never intended for it to grow as long as it had anyway, but I'm kinda lazy about going to the hairdressers. Plus, it's still a year away from the wedding, so it'll have time to grow if I decide to do something with it that requires it to be longer.

***Yeah, so this post and the next one aren't really wedding related, but since this is the best way for me to send news and show pictures to lots of family and friends at the same time, they're going up. Plus, I can make every detail of my life wedding related these days if I try hard enough.

Birthday Cake!

My Birthday was Saturday and Jesse surprised me by making this awesome cake! Neither of us are huge cake fans, but I think it was more about the making it than the eating it. The bear mold came from his mom, who used to make him all kinds of elaborately shaped cakes when he was little (i've heard about cakes shaped like transformers, mickey mouse, wolverine, and his own little teddy bear cake at least, although there are probably others, too). And the little molds to make the tiny bear's cake came from his friend, Dave, who makes tons of beautiful cakes and cookies. So, thanks for the help, Jesse's Mom and Dave! I helped him decorate it and suffice it to say, we won't be decorating our own wedding cake, although we did have a lot of fun.

The Ball is Officially Rolling!

What are these random pictures of ducks, you may ask and what do they have to do with wedding blog? Well I just wanted to introduce you to some of our future wedding guests. Jesse and I FINALLY made one concrete wedding decision - we're going to have our ceremony in a gazebo in Lititz Springs Park. Yes, a park, after all of those churches we visited. This location just feels more representative of the two of us. But after what happened with Andrea's wedding, we made sure to promise my parents we'd be triple prepared for any kind of possible weather problems!

Jesse didn't want me to post any of the photos of actual site so as not to ruin the surprise (it's supposed to be a surprise?), but I'm sure you know what a gazebo looks like anyway. And as a teaser, if you look really hard you can see a corner of it on the right side of photo #3. Instead you get photos of some of the surrounding area of the park including the duck pond and the fountain. They even have little 25 cent vending machines along the stream that dispense hand fulls of duck food. How fun is that! So, if you get bored during the ceremony, feel free to feed the ducks.

In other good news, we also found an officiant who we both really like, a retired pastor who lives next door to Jesse's family. We talked to him for quite a while and both instantly felt comfortable with him. Now if only we could nail down a reception site....

p.s. - the upstanding gentlemen standing next to me in photo #2 is Jesse's Dad. Click on the pictures to enlarge.

Andrea's Wedding

Here are a couple of photos of my sister, Andrea and her new husband, Brent at their wedding, which was held in her backyard over the weekend. Since it was outside, of course we got thunderstorms all morning and even a tornado watch. Thankfully all of the rain cleared up just in time for the ceremony and all of the guests pitched in for a last minute set up. Her mother-in-law spent the whole year preparing their backyard by planting specific flowers and moving trees around and her father-in-law built the bamboo arch himself. I applaud them both - the space looked like an oasis. Congratulations, Andrea! Now my family just has one more wedding to go, let's hope it goes just as smoothly (my fingers are crossed).

Wedding dresses I won't be wearing

Jesse and I went down to Alabama over the weekend for my sister's wedding, which was wonderful (I'll post those photos in a second). While I was there I also went on my first wedding dress shopping trip with my mom. I know it's still really early to start looking at dresses, but since my parents live in Alabama and I live in Philadelphia, this was one of the only chances I would get to go with my Mom before the big day. We went to David's Bridals in Tuscaloosa, which was okay, but none of the dresses really stood out to me. I definitely didn't find "the one" or anything like that. At least now I have a better idea of what I'm looking for though (no halter dresses, no big frou frou skirts, and no crazy lace-all-over patterns) and my mom and I had fun. So, here are three that I definitely won't be wearing on my wedding day. And I should credit my Mom with the awesome camera skills.

Churches Churches!

Well last weekend Deanna and I ventured to my hometown of Lititz, Pa. We saw 8 or so churches in the Lancaster County area, got to look inside 5 or 6 of them, and attended three services. So we fit a lot of worshipping into two days. We saw some places we liked, and some we didn't, and got a better idea of what our options are as far as locations go. We plan on going back in the next few weeks to go to some more services. There were two churches we looked inside and liked, but didn't attend yet. So we will see how we like the priests. We are looking at Catholic churches so Deanna can feel a little more at home for the wedding. So we will report back after the next visit. Maybe we will have some pictures up if we think we have found a place we like. The one thing we did determine for sure is that we will not be having the reception in the Yellow Barn at Landis Valley.

-Jesse

yeah, now i'm even drawing brides....

This post has nothing to do with our own wedding plans, but it does have to do with brides, so it's going up.

This is an illustration I finished up over the weekend for the Baltimore Citypaper. It's being paired with a bridal gown sample sale listing in their "calender events" section. Their art director, Joe, is really awesome and since he knows that I'm engaged he thought I'd have the most fun with the assignment. And he's right since I've already been spending too much time looking at tons of pictures of wedding gowns on the web, why not chalk it up to "research"?

In other news, Jesse and I are making our second attempt to go to Lititz this weekend to start looking at churches. Let's cross our fingers and hope some decisions get made!

Possible new wedding date

We're thinking of going with Saturday, May 24th, 2008 as the new wedding date. This falls on Memorial Day weekend, though, and we've read so much advice about not planning around holidays. Is Memorial Day a holiday large enough to cause us problems? If you have advice about this, please share.

It's one of the only good early summer dates for us that doesn't coincide with exams or graduations or birthdays. Plus, I'm trying my hardest not to move the date back any further (a five-year courtship + a year-and-a-half engagement is enough to test even the most patient of girls, and as anyone who's met me can testify, that is one virtue that I don't have).

New Wedding date

I found out that I'll be teaching a class at the Maryland Institute, College of Art during the Spring semester of 2008, so we've decided to move the wedding date from April 26th until the end of May. This way, classes will be over by then and I won't have to contend with with commuting to Baltimore and preparing lessons at the same time as the wedding. This is especially easy to do since we haven't really planned or booked anything yet for the earlier date. When we've set a definite May date, I'm sure we'll let everyone know.

Ring!

Well, even though Jesse went to Lititz this weekend to see his folks, I ended up staying here and working on an assignment. So our wedding planning is getting put off for at least another week. We will actually do this, I promise!

Here's a pic of my lovely engagement ring in the meantime. Jesse looked for months in different antique shops and finally found this beauty. The band is white gold and from 1928 and the stone is from the 1940s. I LOVE it! He had to guess my size, 'cause I'm not really a jewelry person, and he did a good job because it fits perfectly!

Welcome to our wedding page!

Well Deanna and I are about to embark on a year(+) long journey into wedding preperation and planning. This weekend we are going to start looking for wedding and reception locations in my hometown of Lititz, Pa. I know it would be more customary to have the wedding in the bride's hometown, but we decided more of our guests will be coming from the northern region rather than the south, so it makes more sense for everyone's traveling purposes. I was more than willing to have the wedding in Alabama, but I'm happy to be celebrating this event back home. So Deanna and I are going to be updating this blog to let you the reader (whoever you are) know where we are at with planning, where we are registering, what are the colors, and all that fun stuff. Suggestions and recommendations are more than welcome. Thankfully, this is our first time planning a wedding, so we are still pretty new when it comes to this stuff.