This week in ABC's

A- arranging all of the millions of boxes of Christmas stuff...fun.

B-bought the remaining stuff I need to make centerpieces, except one little piece, they are gonna be boss, aka I am going to like em.

C- cackling at The West Wing that William has been watching recently.

D- dreaming about our upcoming Roman vacation, I AM SO EXCITED!

E- Exercising....not. But this week, that will all change.

F- freezing to death because we got our December heating bill, and dropped the thermostat by 4 degrees. :-)

G- Griping because I am upset about my 2% pay roll tax. 2% is a lot when you are poor, but not poor enough to receive government benefits.

H- hating a particular someone for ruining the end of "Lost" for me. You will never be forgiven.

I- Invitations. It just occurred to me that three months before May 18th is not March 18th, its February 18th. So I am currently putting invitations together and we are deciding on the A list, B list and the people we don't actually want to send an invitation to but we are going to in hopes that they can't come but they will still send a present.:-)

J- Javert aka the bad guy in my new undertaking of reading Les Miserables. Maybe I'll be done before I change my name.

K- is for Krispy Kreme and King Street Blues, mine and William's new restaurant by our house. We could walk but its freezing in these here parts.

L- loving our last break before he doesn't have to leave anymore aka he is stuck with me forever. Lifetime without the chance of parole.

M- missing my family, A LOT.

N- is for Cheer cheer cheer for old NOTRE DAME!! Great season. 

O- one hundred and twenty six days.

P- Pinning. Always pinning.

Q- quality time with my sweet baa boo, including lots of LOST and lots of Italy planning.

R- I am planning on reusing some of my Christmas lights in some classy decorating, not dorm room style, pictures to come.

S- the Simpsons app on William's I phone has woken me up or scared me or annoyed me no less that 56789 times this week,

T- turkey sandwiches.

U- Usurped William's guess that they Bronco's would win. The Ravens are my super bowl pick. Bow to the queen.

V- very Hipster glasses, aka William's new glasses. Circa 1960. Love.

W- wishing wishing wishing that May 18th- 25th would come quickly and pass slowly.

X- I kind of knew from the beginning of this post that I wouldn't have an X. Oh well.

Y- yawn, this whole alphabet thing took a lot more thought than I thought it would.

Z- for zebra, I don't have to have a reason.

lovesies.

10 Simple Things

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! I am pretty sure this year is going to be my favorite year yet. We are 4 months and two weeks away from the wedding (what???) which is also 134 days. That is an incredible jump from the 400+ days that we started with. I would say it has flown by, but I like to be transparent on this sucker. 

Since the holidays have come and gone, leaving a bevy of engaged young ladies in its wake, I decided to make a list of 10 Simple Things that I have learned whilst trying to plan our wedding. I am by no means an expert but experience is the best teacher. I will probably have to make a Part 2 after the wedding because I am sure there are going to be more flubs in the future. 

Without further ado....

10 Simple Things To Do and Not Do When Planning Your Wedding

1) This ones for the MEN: Propose in a time frame where you would get married in the next 6-9 months. It gets really hard to wait on a lot of things, a lot of my mistakes came from trying to start things to early because I had a year plus to plan. I will elaborate more on this later.

2) Join The Knot: This website has guided me  A LOT  in time management. If I had obeyed its awesome To Do list, I would have saved money for sure. And if you need ideas they have a huge database of dresses, floral arrangements, invitations, etc and they also have most vendors in your area reviewed and rated. There are also some really great Q&A articles about etiquette etc. Its really helpful, I had one before we were engaged because I'm a freak but it is really helpful. I printed a To Do list out for myself and one for my mom, so that we would be able to keep up with the list on hard copy and keep all our paper contracts in one place. 

3) BEWARE giving out your email: I have two email addresses; my school one which became my junk one that I give out when I know you are going to send me a bunch of BS I don't care about, and then the one I used for important stuff, bills, Craft of the Day from Martha Stewart, and personal emails. I thought that wedding stuff wouldn't be junk and I should just give out my personal email so I don't miss all of those awesome opportunities! False. I get no less that 30 emails a day from Wedding stuff that I couldn't care less about. I am currently in a purge of unsubscribing from these bitties. Yes this sounds like common sense, mostly because it is. 

4) Registering: Don't register too early, however if you feel like you have to, it will be okay because you can update it online.  William and I registered in April, mostly because I had just totaled my car and I was really sad and I was moving to a new state soon and we didn't want to run out of time. It was a fun date (for the first hour) and then we got ice cream and went to see a movie. But since then, because I have moved three times since then, we have had to go ahead and get things that we really needed but had registered for already. For instance, I lived for 2 months without a microwave and then was like WRRRRRONNNG. Santa brought me one so that I could eat hot food. Thank you Santa. We also registered for the Big Bang Theory, all of the seasons on DVD, and William's sister got him the first season for Christmas. We haven't gotten any presents from our registry yet and I have just had to keep updating it. Make your registry a little bit before you send out your invites or whatever tells people where you are registered.

5) Time Talent Treasure: I have made in abundantly clear that I refuse to spend a ton of money on the wedding. This is all well and good but weddings require a lot of things that cost money. How does one still have the beautiful wedding that you want but not have to refinance your soul? William and I are so blessed to be surrounded by generous people. People have/ are giving us more gifts of time, talent and treasure than we could possibly name. We are so grateful. We will treasure these things far above the toaster oven someone we will never see again will give us. For instance: my dear sweet Johnny is addressing our invitations because he can write beautiful calligraphy (I'm pretty sure he is going to address his own in pencil chicken scratch, but I don't blame him). This is a huge gift of time and talent. My grandparents have the most beautiful car, the same make, model and color of the one they left their wedding in, and they are letting us use it for the wedding. An example of treasure that is being shared to make our wedding beautiful. Ask the people around you to do things. Do you have a friend with a beautiful voice, ask them to sing. Do you have an army of laborers that will help you to put things together? Use them. People love you and want to feel included in your day. 

6) Bridesmaid Dresses: Now, I have the most wonderful bridesmaids ever, I am blessed with a support system of beautiful women that are there for me no matter what. There is one in Minnesota, one in Winston Salem, three in Charlotte, and one in Baltimore, and I am in the pit of Hell aka NOVA. We are far spread. I wanted to be helpful and not make everyone have to make a trip to a central location so I just showed them a selection of dresses I really liked and a place from which they could order them. This sounds like a really nice and considerate idea. FALSE. It really just ended up being more stressful for them. I should have just added some extra time somewhere and had everyone that could come, come and get their dress at once and then if someone couldn't, we would figure it out. Just do it up right, have a scene from outta Bridesmaids minus the explosive diarrhea. It's fun and will be 56708 times less stressful. 

7) Practical: There is a bevy of places from which you can order things for your wedding, however, I have had the best experience with Oriental Trading ( SO CHEAP) and they have a huge variety of things, and surprisingly, I received this advice from another bride, check Ebay and search "cancelled wedding" People cancel fully planned weddings all the time and then have tons of stuff they just want out of the way. Etsy is also awesome, you get an original work of art that no one else will ever have. I like it. Also Groupon and Living Social can be really helpful. 

AND THIS AMAZING WEBSITE. I am not exaggerating when I say this website has saved me close to $500 dollars, it gives you codes for free shipping, and percentages off of purchases. I use it for everything now. If you don't do anything else that I suggested in this blog, and even if you aren't getting married, check out this website.

8) Have no less than 10 people look over things you get printed : SERIOUSLY. I ordered these invitations, (too early I might add). Our first batch of invitations were lovely but didn't have the church on it. FAIL. William looked at them, my mom looked at them, I looked at them, my sister looked at them, my dad looked at them. And yet we still ordered invitations with no location on them.  The second batch, all those people looked at them, three bridesmaids, the MOG and his sister. These better be perfect. Or else.  (yes I judged myself by making reference to the MOG instead of just saying William's mom, but it was convenient)

9)Take Things With A Grain of Salt: It is impossible to plan and execute a wedding the way you have it envisioned without hurting someone's feelings. Someone is going to get mad at you. Someone is going to feel snubbed. Someone will try to cause drama. OH WELL.  Get over it, just let it roll of your back. You cannot make yourself and everyone else happy at the same time. But the truth of the matter is that this is your wedding. They are going to be involved in 100 more weddings, but you only get one. This is not to say that if someone's feelings are seriously hurt you shouldn't apologize but seriously. Someone's pissed and doesn't want to come because of something you may have said 2 years ago? Oh well. Don't come. Saves me money. Didn't address something correctly? Sorry.  Didn't invite someone that you wouldn't know from Adam? It's your wedding. The most important thing about this wedding is the marriage. Period. 

10) If You want something a certain way: If you want something a certain way and someone else has to do it; for example; the music, make sure you go in to your meeting or whatever with a very concise yet exhaustive plan. It's your wedding, if you want something, know what you want, and get it done. If you want something else done a certain way, do it yourself. Keep people's limitations in mind. For example: I wanted to do my Bridal portraits at my Grandma's house, they have beautiful barns and a big white house and huge fields perfect for fun bridals. However, they aren't young anymore and if I asked them to do that, I know they would stress and try and make sure everything is manicured and gorgeous, and I don't want to put that stress on them. Ergo, I chose somewhere else, where it's their job to keep their lawns manicured. 

This is my advice. Take it or leave it. I am stoked for my wedding and wish I had listened to this advice before I got well into planning.