A Very Carrie Wedding?

I know that I am not the only on dying to find out if the Bradshaw/Preston wedding will indeed take place. Will Sam and Smith make it? Will Steve and Miranda have another Brady? Will Harry and Charlotte have a house full of little ones? How did the girls meet? Will they live in NYC forever? Will Charlotte and Harry move to CT or VT? What will Carrie do with her apartment? What does Big do for a living? Will Jennifer Hudson sing at some point?

Just a few more hours before I find out the answers to all these questions………..

My Life By The Numbers

Following the lead of Jessica of Tying the Knot, Jess of the Indianapolis Pink Book, April of blu sky designs and "Stella" in Stella Event Design

580 ~ Days since I met Mr. Man at a Halloween Party – he was dressed as Slash and I was dressed as a Cherokee Indian Squaw
324 ~ Days we dated before Mr. Man asked me to marry him
357 ~ Days we have been together
307 ~ Days since Mr. Man told me he loved me
307 ~ Days since I told him that I loved him too
327 ~ Days since I realized I was falling in love with him and told my entire family
27 ~ Days we have been engaged
178 ~ Days until we are to be married
179 ~ Days until we leave for our honeymoon
2-3 ~ Number of children we want to have
2 ~ Number of dogs we want to get
1 ~ Number of cats Mr. Man said he will tolerate
3 ~ Number of caterers I have to look at quotes from
150 ~ Number of guest we are inviting to the wedding
125 ~ Number of guests we are roughly expecting
56 ~ Number of guests who are my immediate relatives
8 ~ Number of attendants
3 ~ Number of stores we are registered
4 ~ Number of stores I went to find my dress
50 ~ Number of dresses I tried on
8 ~ Number of stores I went to and dragged Mr. Man to find the perfect organization tools for the wedding planning
1 ~ Number of men who have my heart and that I can’t wait to get married to!

What are you numbers? This site can help you figure out the days.

And like Jessica of Tying the Knot says "because every post should have a pretty picture"

Check out these great finds from Ilee.

Yeah for finding a guy that is that into me!

What you are about to enter is for real…this is a play date

I have a confession to make: I come from a broken home….(pause for gasp and sympathy tilted head looks.) I counted once and I tallied up between four parental units, my momma, my father, my daddy (a little confusing I know – there is a long story there I would rather keep to those who know me) and my step-monster (AKA as my step-mother of 22 years and this btw is a term of endearment – she calls me her stepped-on kid) I came up with eleven marriages and nine divorces……….WOW right?

I am very aware of the age old stat that children of divorce parents are more likely to get divorced themselves. I do not take lightly the sanctity of marriage and the heavy responsibility that it brings. Neither does my honey.

We both attend Buckhead Church in Atlanta (this is how we met) and they offer 2-to-1 Premarital Mentoring, a premarital counseling program that couples engaged couples with married couples to ask important questions that will help us have a better marriage. If you have seen the movie “License to Wed” and you have no knowledge of premarital counseling, I assure you the movie is a gross misrepresentation of the process.

We also did a study together before the ring that was very helpful, “101 Questions to Ask Before You Get Engaged”. Note this is a biblically based study and while we loved it, it may not be your speed. There are other books out there that are secular. One I found on Amazon is “1001 Questions to Ask Before You Get Married”. It got fairly high reviews.

All this planning is fun and exciting, but more fun and exciting is what is to come. Anniversaries, and many of them. I encourage you brides to be to look into premarital counseling or charge your honey to do so. Yeah, it may not be pretty or sexy, but neither is divorce. Also, if you are talking with your honey about the big M – check out some books that you both can read together. It was really scary at first when we began our book; I totally underestimated the power of the book and how it would impact me. I am not ashamed to say that I cried a lot and was convinced that Mr. Man would leave me, but….well, that didn’t happen.

Here are other books for Amazon.com

• Getting Ready for Marriage Workbook: How to Really Get to Know the Person You're Going to Marry
• Don't You Dare Get Married Until You Read This! The Book of Questions for Couples
• The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

I wish you well

Ok - two post in one day...If I see something I like.....

I {heart} these wishing trees.

Credits: Black and Pink Wishes - Flickr User - mischa dehart ~ Wedding Wishes on Paper - Flickr User - Delay Tactics ~ Wedding Wishes - Flickr User - Gauhaus Photos ~ Wishing Bowl - Flickr User - oipom / Meggan

Love This

Our reception is at an old farm house out in the country. I found this great Kissing Tree on Michelle Rago that I may want to replicate.
I am going to have to think about how to integrate this into the set design.

Sweets for the sweet

Jason has a huge sweet tooth. He is known for having tons of goodies around at all times. So, for our reception, it is only natural for us to have a candy bar for our guest to enjoy some of our favorite yummies.

Credits: The New Candy Bar – Theknot.com ~ Pink & Brown Candies - Laura Kleger Photography ~ Candy Bar - Dylan's Candy Bar ~ Blue & Black Candies – Azul Photography ~ Round Candy Bar - Dylan's Candy Bar ~ Love Is Sweet - Nicole Polk Photography ~ Love Bar - Flickr User - Mterhune24 ~ Green & Orange Candies -Polito Photography ~ Yummy Candy Bar - The Party Goddess ~ Candy for sale - Fresh Market

Automagically

I am a huge Flickr and BigHugeLabs fan because of all the fun things you can do with your photos, like.........choose your color palette. BigHugeLabs has a fun tool that 'Automagically generate a harmonious color palette based on the colors in a photo.' Check it out.

Palette Generator

Right now I am leaning towards the Brown and Purple.

Purple
Red and Orange

Brown and Purple

Who to invite & who goes to the B list………..

Making a list and checking it twice is one of the first things Jason and I did when making the master plans for our big day. It was hard, we may have had a few disagreements on etiquette and how things are ‘done.’

Most of the ‘experts’ say to make an A list and B list. Does everyone get to bring a date? What if they have children?

It would be uncouth for me to tell you how our list panned out – but here are few sites that helped us keep our sanity.

The Knot – Guest List: How to Make It Work

Martha Stewart – The Guest List

Emily Post – Wedding Planner, Guest List

Bridal Sale, you are putting me in Bridal Hell

Why would you send a person in Atlanta a sale flyer for a sale not held in thier city.....It's called marketing segmentation people.

How far is Baltimore from Atlanta?

He Really Wants That Church

I know that some brides can turn into stalkers…..but I think my fiancé has the gene in him too.

OK –wrap up from the last few days

• Saturday Morning – Fiancé and I found a great place to have the reception.
• Saturday Day – Found a fabulous church to have the ceremony – Fiancé says that he would pay a million dollars to have our wedding there. He is pretty thrifty, but the glimmer in his eye tells me he is serious
• Later That Day – e-mailed both to express interest
• Still Later That Day – received an e-mail from reception place with further information
• Late, Late That Night – no word from church, this makes me very sad
• Sunday – Fiancé suggest calling church, since after all – that's their busiest day – I refuse politely
• Later That Night – Fiancé ask me to check e-mail every ten minutes, just in case….
• Monday Day – I call the church after getting a call from Fiancé asking if I had heard from them. I talked to a church assistant who said that the church assistant who handles wedding has locked her desk and she does not have access to the 'calendar'
• Later That Day – We find the e-mail on the church website of the girl who takes care of this 'stuff' and e-mail her, this time I name drop (My Uncle Mitch refurbished the church in 2001 and his in-laws are members of the church)
• Tuesday – I get an e-mail from someone else at the church, I assume someone we cc'd the last e-mail to, saying the exact same thing the lady told on the phone – girl is gone, the desk is locked
• Wednesday Night – Fiancé mentions five times during dinner to make sure to call the church in the morning since she will be returning – he still has that glimmer in his eye
• Late Wednesday Night – During our nightly phone convo, fiancé ask what time I am getting up in the morning so I can call her. I ask Fiancé if he wants the number to call her

To be continued……in a few hours, just to make Fiancé happy

How the deal went down!

So here is how the deal went down - I woke up that Saturday at 11am (late) and realized Jason had not called me which is odd. So I called him and he said he was running errands (picking up the ring) and he was going to need the rest of the day to get some things done (emergency ring sizing.)

He had planned to take me to a picnic at Piedmont Park - but it was a monsoon that day - so he made reservations at Kevin Rathbun's restaurant that night as a back up. He told me that morning that he had made reservations at 7:30 and he would pick me up at 6 (I don't know why I didn't put together the time gaps) and that it was a surprise where he was taking me.

So Jason gets to my place at 6, doesn't say anything about my new dress (he compliments me on sweat pants - so this was odd) and looks nervous. I still didn't pick up on the clues because I was a little annoyed about him not saying anything about my dress. So we are about to leave and he tells me to sit down. He said he needed to talk to me about something. I thought for a minute that he was going to break up with me because he had never said that before.

BUT - he got on one knee (which I didn't notice) and told me he had asked my Grandfather for his blessing (my mother's father because I would had had him ask mom if she were still alive) and he asked my daddy for his blessing and each said they couldn't think of anything better than for the two of us to be married. He then said something about having babies together and growing old together and being each other best friends (I was in la la land then) and the pulled out the ring. I cried, kissed him... cried some more. He had to ask me what my answer was since I never really said yes...so we went to eat at the restaurant which tried to go to for New Years.

I told him that since it was such a nice place he would need to save it for the night he proposes to me. (That is why he didn't tell me where we were going) and then we went to Cafe Intermezz where we had our first date.

With This Ring....I The Insurance

Sure, it is all fun and games looking at bridal magazines. Do not try to deny that we all haven’t looked at them imaging our dream wedding because I have been looking at Bride Magazine since I was 10. It is a very different matter planning an actual live breathing wedding and the other matters that come with an engagement.

Here is one item I never thought of before the engagement. Insurance! So here is the low down on what I have recently learned.

What were to happen if you lost your ring or God forbid you were robbed? Your fiancé may have spent months saving for it or it may have been in his family (or yours) for generations. How would you replace it?

You may have renter insurance and for some policies, like the one I have through State Farm, covers jewelry up to $1000. After that, you are on your own. The answer to that is a rider. What is a rider?

A rider is: An amendment to an insurance policy that modifies the policy by expanding or restricting its benefits or excluding certain conditions from coverage.

WHAT?

Basically this means that you are covered above the amount stated in the original policy. A rider will only cover you to a certain amount as well. So if you have an article, say an engagement ring that is worth around $10,000, your best bet is to get Personal Articles Floater. From the Travelers Insurance website:

Personal Articles Floater provides even more comprehensive coverage than the Valuables Items Plus endorsement. The Personal Articles Floater is the right coverage for you if you wish to protect items that have been carefully selected and whose values exceed the limits of either a Homeowners policy or a Valuable Items Plus endorsement.

You have to have an appraisal of your ring to send into the insurance company. This was probably given to your honey when he bought the rock, but if you don’t have it, no fear. Call a local jeweler; ask nicely if they could appraise your ring for you for insurance purposes. Most should be happy to help, since after all, you are going to need to buy a wedding band for your man soon.

Now, the question that everyone wants to know, but does not want to ask.

COST

A Personal Articles policy will run you about $100 per year. There are different deductibles that will dictate how much you have to pay.

I hope this is useful to someone as it would have been helpful to me. I also hope you never have to actually use the insurance and you ring stays safe and close to you at all times!

I'm not crazy yet!

Because we are getting married so soon, so many things have to be done ASAP. With this stress - I am sure that my family is convinced that I will end up here.

Getting Organized to Get Married

The day after Mr. Man and I were engaged I dragged the poor boy to five stores (some stores twice) to find the perfect tools to get organized for the big day. I saw this great tote from russell + hazel in Brides.com


I thought it would be great, but since I knew a lot of my vendors already and this looked more like a tote for someone planning wedding with a 400+ guest list. Not for me.

I am a clipper (a person who tears magazine clips and saves them) and have been for years. So I thought that maybe this file caddy from Anna Griffin would be cool to collect all the ideas I collected.

But, again, this was not for me since I really don't have a lot of time to collect a lot of ideas. I have six months to plan for the wedding. So I went out and looking for something that would work for me. Something light to carry around, something that would follow some type of logical order and not be too fluffy and over whelm me. One of the store we went to was Barnes and Nobel and there are a slew of books for this. There was the Martha Stewart Book and there was The Complete Wedding Planner & Organizer. All very good, but still not for me!
Mr. Man, knowing me all to well, suggested that I make my own organizer. So I went a looking for some great web resources I could download.

I found two great ones that I combined for my personal preference.

Real Simple recently came out with a collection of articles. Online they have handy worksheets you can download for free!

Martha - oh Martha Stewart of course is the queen of beautiful weddings and has a great version of a wedding planner for download as well.

I got a three ring binder, dividers (in pretty colors), corresponding post-it notes, tabs and some very pretty pads of paper to start the project. OH! and I got some paper protectors for the clips I do have time to collect.

The bottom line is that this is your wedding and not everything is going to fit everyone. This includes organization products.

Sparkle and Shine

Because everyone is asking...

Ta Dah! The Ring

I have to have it sized - which is going to be harder than I thought. I don't want to take it off, despite the near eye gouge I experienced Sunday morning when I woke up and rubbed my eyes. This sucker could hurt someone!

Date, Location, Church & Glory, Glory Georgia

What dress I would wear, what time will the get away car come, will we have a bouquet or garter toss? These are things I always knew I would have to consider while planning our wedding.

One thing I never thought of however, was SEC football.

Being a native of the south and marring a sweet boy who went to a SEC school, we have had to consider scheduling our wedding around UGA football. The last thing we want is for people to leave early to watch the game or not come at all.

The stress begins!

Will you? Why, yes I will!

Jason asked me to marry him Saturday night. All the wonderful details are to follow!