Material Girl

I’ve changed. For the better. I hope. One of my biggest physical change is that I want desperately to have nice nails. Since I was a kid I have picked, chewed, pulled, peeled my nails. So not only were my nails short and ragged but I had hang nails too.

When I had a special occasion on the horizon I paid big bucks to have false nails put on. The irony? They always came off AND your nails were worse for the wear!

Well, old habits die hard. Though with the help of Keri at Eclips I am on my way to redemption. I have been getting the soak off gels put on. Harder polish on my natural nails. They are growing and they are not easy for me to pick at – well not as easy anyway. I had my nails done again on Saturday and Keri commented on my picking at my skin. Hey, I’m learning! I have to be weaned off I guess. If I can’t pick at my nails then I will pick at the skin. Is there a support group for this?!

I was a bit concerned about becoming high maintenance when making Chad take me to WalMart while on vacation. The main purpose was super glue. Yes, for a broken nail. I really did not know what else to do about it. The crack was too far down for me to just cut the nail down. I’m still learning I guess.

Thanks for putting up with me Keri!

At this point I am not worried about my nails and their appearance for wedding pictures. I am more concerned about not having bumps and bruises on my head. In just one day I attacked myself. That’s right I attacked myself. First the telephone. Yes, the telephone. I reached to answer the phone with my right hand. While bringing it to my ear I was off center and instead hit the upper right corner of my right eye. Enough to knock my glasses off kilter and cause a headache. After all that someone else in the office had beat me to answering it anyway.

Second, while putting a box away in the garage I ran into something with the box which then caused the box to jam into my nose. I am always grateful that there is seldom anyone around to witness my most graceful moments.

Perhaps I should get to bed early tonight before lucky incident number three strikes…

Making Progress

I should have added a recent story about myself with Thing One and Thing Two. While shopping not too long ago I found the big bag of peanut butter M&M’s. I had to buy it because it seems you can never find the big bag of those! So I have (eeerrr had) them on my desk so I had a lot of visitors. While Emily, Thing Two, was in my office helping me with something I asked her how she eats her M&M’s. Personally, I like to sort them by color and eat them in order of quantity. Emily eats her in order of color. Blue is gross in her opinion so she eats those first. Meanwhile Nikki, Thing One, is in her office shaking her head at us saying “oh my god” over and over again. Just another day at work! And yet another one of my retentive tendencies I have made public…

Today, I took one of our engagement pictures down to the Perfect Edge to be framedfor Chad’s office. The picture is to the right. If you have not had the experience of working with the crew at the Perfect Edge you should. Alone, I would be totally overwhelmed by all the colors, textures, frames, matting, etc. But after a few brief moments of examining the picture Anja presents the perfect solution and I walk out a happy girl. The project should be ready by April 1^st. I plan to give this to Chad in honor of our anniversary. Our dating anniversary that is – since it will be the last one of those we celebrate!

I believe I have mentioned my search for burlap here previously. Well, I have succeeded in finding it. Pinter’s Garden’s & Pumpkins can get natural colored burlap for me in various sizes. Once we figure out how many tables we will have I will get it ordered. We are also getting out wedding cake from Pinter’s so it will be nice to take care of both things with them. Burlap, check.

Shoes for the girls and I have also been secured. I must admit I was getting pretty discouraged while shoe shopping. I was in the market for flats since I am naturally a bit taller than Chad but found these with a very small heal on them. I was actually initially looking for a pair of Pumas. Really who is going to see my shoes anyway so I might as well be comfortable right?! If I was going to wear Pumas I wanted them to either be brown/green (wedding colors) or red/yellow (Iowa State colors). As luck would have it Thing Two found these cute polka-dot shoes in the clearance section. The photo shows my shoe on my right foot and the bridesmaids shoes on my left. Whew, shoes done, check.

Next, I’ll introduce you to the bridesmaids! Six months from today we will be getting married!

Do It Yourself Decorating

We continue to work on fine tuning our invite list which is ever expanding. I think we have an invite going to just about every post office box in Calmar and beyond! Thank goodness for whitepages.com or I would not be nearly as far along with addresses.

I have been thinking a lot about decorations lately. I really like the rustic themes with the hand crafted touch. I have recruited Mason’s help with a sign project. This is a picture of what I would like him to make on a smaller scale. I just want three directional signs that say food , bar, dance. We will put it in a bucket of sand covered in burlap and block a stairway with it at Jewels. When I told Mason about it he wanted to get right to work. We are still looking for some old wood - let me know if you have any ideas!

I also found this idea and love it. I am hoping to find some styrofoam containers that we can line with burlap and put some hen and chicks in them. And hopefully some of our green thumbed guests will take them home at the end of the evening. Chad’s aunt has hen and chicks that we can use so the project will be hands on and inexpensive. I hope the bridal party is ready to get their hands dirty! Don't get me wrong - we still need the ladies at Party Island too!

I will admit that I felt pretty confident about what local businesses could offer. But I continue to learn. Did you know you can order napkins by the case at Bargain Outlet? They are $2.50/50 napkins and come 600 in a case. They have a nearly endless color supply when you order. I will be going in and ordering a case of brown and a case of green napkins. Way more than we will probably need but I can split the brown napkins with my sister for her June wedding.

We have not seen the engagement pictures yet but I will share as soon as we get them!

More of the Details

Pictures went well and I am anxious to see them! We took pictures in our dress outfits at Vesterheim on the west side of their building. We ran into the Chamber to change and headed out to the quarry for the fun pictures. We took some pictures in a pile of lime which I refer to as a rock pile and Chad laughs at me. We also took some pics against one of the truck, by an old building, and in the bucket of a loader truck. And it snowed the whole time!

Enough about pictures. As I have mentioned we are using Jewels for our reception. The advantages are that we can choose our caterer and control the bar. The disadvantages are that the place is a mess and it requires cleaning and a lot of decorating. We were concerned about the bathrooms and I really hate the thought of having to clean them ourselves. In fact I refuse to. I have been in touch with ServiceMaster to clean the bathrooms. I will gladly pay them to clean it. I figure if I am not willing to clean them myself I should not ask either of our moms to do it either!

We are getting all of our decorations through Party Island. They are very helpful – you can check them out on Facebook. Tammy Brink and Jill Dawley are great to work with and they have a lot of ideas. The majority of our decorating bill was spent on linens and their labor to cover up all the orange shag carpet at Jewels. I am sure it will look beautiful and I am glad that Party Island is available to make the days leading up to the wedding a little less stressful for us. And since I nearly kicked her at our appointment I am glad Tammy is still willing to help!

I want to use burlap down the center of the tables and put the centerpieces on it. I am on a mission to get the burlap in town. My first stop was at Pine Needles Quilt Shop. They don’t carry burlap and don’t have a distributor for it. I made another call and had a very interesting conversation that left me a bit perplexed. They actually told me they don’t get what people mean when they say they want to shop local. They offered to email me some pricing information on flowers and burlap which I never received. Needless to say we are moving on. I plan to talk to some of the landscapers to see if we can get some from them. We are getting the cake from Pinters so I think they will probably be my next call.

All the flowers are coming from The Country Garden. They also have a Facebook page. The price is right and JoEllen is great to work with. We are using white gerbera daisies and roses. The bridesmaids will be carrying just three daisies with a bit of greenery. All boutiners will be a single daisy. My bouquet will have a rose daisy combo. We are hanging pails on the edge of the pews and they will have green hydrangeas in them. I am excited to work with JoEllen on the wedding.

We need more tables than what Jewels has on hand – did you know that Windridge Implement has a trailer full of tables you can rent? Not sure if we have enough yet but we should probably finalize the guest list before we get too crazy!

Short Form, Long Form, No Form?

Choosing a wedding date was not terribly easy. My sister is getting married on June 11^th of this year as well and I did not want to totally overwhelm my parents! We also did not want to wait until 2012 to get married. When all was settled we were planning for September 17^th.

So begins the conversations with the church. Chad is Catholic and I am Lutheran. Chad’s preference was to get married at St. Aloysius in Calmar. I was open to that as I am in the process of joining a new church and don’t have the established relationship that he has. And having grown up Catholic I was more than willing to go along with his wish.

So first we make sure the date is available with the church – yes! Next we must meet with Father Hawes. I’ll admit I was more than a little nervous as I had heard that the process may not be as easy as we were hoping for. Turns out I had reason to be nervous. I honestly feel as though I may have been better received had I been to prison and back rather than being divorced. I further complicated the situation by growing up Catholic and marrying Lutheran the first time.

I was going to need an annulment. The question was did we need the short form or the long form? The short form is easy - $25 and a couple of weeks and it could be done. I needed a copy of my marriage license and my certificate of baptism. Easy enough. The long form was more expensive (I don’t recall the amount) and it could take 9-12 months with out a guarantee of approval. What?! Really how many people are willing to wait for that?

We left that initial meeting feeling pretty disenchanted. Lucky for us within 24 hours of that meeting we were told we could file the short form and all turned out well in the end. I plan to stay with the Lutheran Church as my boys are being raised Lutheran and I would like to worship with them.

I am happy that Chad is able to be married in his family’s church as his brothers were. Don’t interpret this posting as a religious battle. In my opinion we are both Christians and it is more about making our wedding what we want it to be.

We will be married on September 17, 2011 at St. Aloysius with the reception to follow at Jewel’s Skate Country.

Of course there are more details to come!

Cheers,

Kristina