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.