Dream A Little Dream Of...

Disturbing wedding scenarios I've dreamt about:

- having the reception in the wrong room
- finding the perfect centerpieces
- all the bridesmaids wearing hideous dresses
- my wedding dress turning out horribly wrong
- wearing way too much makeup
- unnecessary candles on the reception tables
- wrong officiant holding the ceremony, and finally,
- wrong groom.

That's right, I've dreamt about marrying the wrong guy. And the most disturbing part: everyone at the wedding was trying unsuccessfully to convince me it was Kevin.

And you thought I had this whole "wedding stress" thing under control.

In more positive news, we made the final decision on wedding party attire, so the guys and gals should be ordering this week. We also scheduled some tentative dates for the bridal shower and girls' weekend, and I designed and ordered our guestbook using our engagement photos by Reflections Photography. On the to-do list for this week: invitation design and ceremony music.

Yeap, this is a fairly accurate portrayal of my wedding nightmare.

Surprise!

Dad and Mom O and I schemed to plan a surprise visit for Kevin this weekend. I flew in last night and joined them for dinner at Kev's favorite steakhouse. He tried unsuccessfully for about an hour to pretend he was mad at me :)

We put today (Saturday) to good use: breakfast at a Park West Diner with the family and putting our Christmas gifts into storage. Then it was time for some apartment hunting. We visited a couple areas and narrowed down our favorites to Boonton and Morristown. Kevin braved a bridal salon with me to look some bridesmaid dresses. Our most exciting stop of the day was Aires Jewelers' new showroom. We met with Ron (who designed my beautiful engagement ring) to pick out Kevin's wedding band and design mine. He had some great suggestions and we can't wait to see the digital mock-up of the rings together. And Kevin picked out a very cool engraved tungsten carbide band.

After a nap and dinner, we set up Kevin's HD webcam with the Sparkbooth program and tested it out--the photos turned out even better! Needless to say, our photo booth is going to be awesome.

We also decided on an invitation design, which my sister Kim will revamp for us (more DIY!). On the tap for this evening is choosing ceremony music, making final decisions on the bridal party attire, and, of course, doing Kevin's RI lesson :)

 

(most beautiful, but surprisingly difficult to fit with a band)

Build our own photobooth? Heck yes.

Kevin and I love photobooths (as evidenced by our blog banner ^^). We wanted to have one at our reception, but the options were limited (this is, afterall, Erie) and expensive. On a whim, I googled "DIY photobooth" tonight and found Sparkbooth, an incredible, automatic, fully-customizable photobooth software for $59! All you need is a laptop, webcam, and printer. With the help of my handy friend Phil Kies, I think we can definitely build a sweet booth. Here are the trial run photos (and these with my $6 webcam!):

 

"Orange?"

My monthly fix of BRIDES Magazine (compliments of Brian & Danielle--thank you:) arrived on Saturday, and I am proud to point out that not only is there an entire spread of how to add orange to your wedding color scheme:

and adorable orange details throughout the magazine:

but also that our orange and grey color scheme is listed as a hot color combo:

Not that I need validation from an over-commercialized wedding magazine, but the usual response when I tell people our wedding colors is, "Orange? Really?". So it does feel good to know that someone else out there thinks it's a good idea :) The designer/blogger at How About Orange? shares my enthusiasm for this lovely shade, and also has some pretty cute and environmentally-friendly DIY projects that may be making their way into our wedding day.

We're this close |<--->| to making a decision about the bridal-party-wear; once that's done it will be on to invitations and then cake (my favorite!) and decorations. For now I will say only that there will be helium involved. 

Lots of helium.

Six months down, six months to go!

Kevin got me the most wonderful Christmas present: a ticket to Montana to spend the week with our future ringbearer! Raylen and Aunt Em have had an awesome time working on his walking skills :) And we took some pretty adorable pictures.

We finally mailed our save-the-dates out last Monday, and signed the contract for our reception hall, the Garden Atrium at the Ambassador Center. Information about nearby accommodations is available above on the Hotel Information page in the right-hand sidebar.

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