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