In a little over two months Jesse and I will be married. How exciting! All the rest of the invitations will be mailed out on Wednesday. I'll feel a huge load off of my back once they are out, plus there will be more room in my bedroom once they are gone.
My mom is working very deligently on decorating our 300 or so toasting glasses. They look very nice. My sister-in-law keeps on coming up with wonderful decorating ideas. This week Jesse and I really didn't do anything on the wedding except for addressing a few invitations.
Jesse is going to tile my mom's kitchen. So we spent an hour or so wandering Lowe's last night. I'm so glad Jesse knows how to do stuff when it comes to building/remodeling/constructing a house...and so is my mom.
There was an asian couple at Lowes. They were speaking another language, but it was obvious that they were arguing. They were both sitting on the floor. The husband was trying to explain something to his wife but she just sat there with her arms on her knees, pouting. A few minutes later I still see the husband talking to her and she finally lifts her head from her lap, glares at her husband and leaves him sitting on the floor. I felt bad for the guy, he just sunk his head as he sat there.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Friday, January 27, 2006
Friday Night
It's friday night. I noticed the other day that it was kind of light in the sky when I got to work, the days must be getting longer. Woo Hoo!!! Someday soon it won't be pitch black outside at six o'clock, and soon after that we'll be in Cabo.
In other news we have already begun receiving response cards and presents, and most of you haven't even gotten your invitations yet. Well done. Well done.
In other news we have already begun receiving response cards and presents, and most of you haven't even gotten your invitations yet. Well done. Well done.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Almost Done...Yet Another One Begins
Last night we almost finished stuffing all our invitations. Only a few more invitations to go with addresses still AWOL. I'll be really glad once we are done with them and out the door. Only two more days until the weekend. That is when Jesse and I do our major wedding planning. I don't think we are going to do any more 10 hour days on wedding items. That was really tiring.
As of right now, I think my new project will be getting my favors ready and looking for flower girl dresses. I'm having four flower girls and possibly five. They look so cute! I think that is when most girls obession about getting married begins....though I hated being a flower girl because my dresses were always itchy.
By the way, I'm looking for a day spa around the area so if you know about one please let me know. Thanks!
As of right now, I think my new project will be getting my favors ready and looking for flower girl dresses. I'm having four flower girls and possibly five. They look so cute! I think that is when most girls obession about getting married begins....though I hated being a flower girl because my dresses were always itchy.
By the way, I'm looking for a day spa around the area so if you know about one please let me know. Thanks!
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Update a Day
The bulk of our invitations won't go out for a week or so, but now that people will start coming here Melissa and I will try to update the progress daily, or just tell you that there's nothing to update. We visited the church again last night and took pictures and measurements and had our decorator/florist look around. So we now know that we should be able to fit everyone we want into the sancuary. That's good.
We ran over our game plan with the Church coordinator and Jackson and Janelle, our most trusted advisors. We're looking good, we just need to nail some things down with the time and with people that are helping us out, and assign tasks and make sure they know what they're doing and that Janelle knows what they're doing. All is proceeding as I have forseen.
Also, thank you to whoever purchased a china set and also to whoever purchased a wine glass. You have made my fiance's day.
We ran over our game plan with the Church coordinator and Jackson and Janelle, our most trusted advisors. We're looking good, we just need to nail some things down with the time and with people that are helping us out, and assign tasks and make sure they know what they're doing and that Janelle knows what they're doing. All is proceeding as I have forseen.
Also, thank you to whoever purchased a china set and also to whoever purchased a wine glass. You have made my fiance's day.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Off To Georgia
Melissa went to Georgia, we knew it was going to be rough, in theory we weren't going to see each other again until Thanksgiving, that's when her first vacation was going to be.
Melissa can fill you in on the details of training, sufficed to say it was really hard, emotionally more than anything being 3000 miles from home. Two weeks after she left on a Saturday she was experiencing the 'Day From Hell.' Physical training with a guy she said was like the T-1000 in his unstoppableness and mercilessness. Those are my words, but that's what she meant. I was in San Diego at the Shredd Dog surf camp that day... (Melissa: Let's just say I wondered if having my face in the mud all day was really worth it. The next day the only thing that didn't hurt was the hair on my head).
We wrote letters and talked on the phone a lot, really got to know each other. I started to learn Spanish and Pete (my employer at the time) started to make noise about going to New York to build a house or two. Melissa found a cool Baptist Church on the 'happening' place around her Georgia home, a nice traditional Church on St. Simons Island with good music and good preaching. A month or so after she got there she also found an unlisted Starbucks at the resort on St. Simons. It was a minimalist little stand, but it saw so little business that Melissa convinced the girl who worked there to make her a java chip frappacino (the favorite drink of Melissa Bravo). Everytime the Starbuck's girl saw her she would start making her frappacino.
The hurricanes came and a few times she almost had to evacuate a few times. Her phone didn't get any reception in her room so she only talked to me outside and she wasn't going outside during the hurricanes, so I had to wait a long time sometimes to see if she was OK. A few times water started leaking into her room on the 3rd floor.
Pete and I ended up going to New York, and I had scheduled out a weeks vacation to go visit the Peach State, and Melissa decided to come visit me in New York on her first 2 day weekend in three months. So after my first week in New York I drove down from upstate to the City and picked her up. We spent the weekend with my aunt down close to NYC, we visited Connecticut (don't ask me...), went to the very first legitimate mall she had seen in months, saw some New England sights, went to church and almost went to some kind of apple festival. On Sunday before her flight home we went to New York City on Polish day, this says Pete, is where they march down the streets in the wrong direction. It was hard to get around, but we did, we had New York pizza, saw 5th Ave. and even found the worlds greatest Macy's. I'm rather surprised that I was able to extract her before her flight. On our way out, once we found our way through the marching Polish, I was driving down a one way street that was really more of an alleyway with cars parked on each side. I was going thirty down this street, and it frequently crossed major streets where people were crossing - even on red. A guy got behind me and right up on my tail and started honking at me because I wasn't going fast enough. Crazy. He passed me by going in the little strip where cars were parked. Crazy.
Two weeks later I went down to Georgia, which for the record, is a lot warmer than New York. I came in to Jacksonville so we went to the downtown there, I kind of wanted to go to a place called Ruth's Chris steakhouse, best steaks ever, but only knew that it was on the river. We parked at the Riverwalk, figuring that we could find it from there. We found a Hooters, but it turns out that Ruth's Chris is on the other side of the river. We had dinner at a nice place anyway, right there looking out over the water. Melissa had warned me about service in the south and sure enough, dinner took some two and a half hours. After we ate we went to the square there on the Riverwalk and enjoyed some live blues for a bit.
Over the weekend we went to Anastasia State Park, where there are some nice beaches, only it rained 20 minutes after we got there, so we went to St. Augustine, home of the oldest fort in the country, there was free admission and they fired a cannon into the bay. It was pretty cool. We explored St. Simon's island the next day and I enjoyed some of the most delicious corn bread I've ever had. We went to Savannah the day after that and explored the historic (read: tourist) district. We got lost on the way out and ended up in some fairly frightening neighborhoods.
Melissa had to go to training for the rest of the week, so we stayed local, I explored Brunswick and the Wal-Mart. I went running near the hotel and almost stepped on a snake the first day. That was fun. I watched a lot of Magnum P.I. too.
The next weekend we drove an hour to the very south east part of Georgia and took a ferry out to Cumberland Island, which is an island where the Carnagies used to have an estate, so there is a giant ruined mansion and other estate things, stables, trellises, storehouses, etc. There are also lots of wild horses around, we saw some of those, but no alligators. I never see alligators, it's so disappointing. I had to go back to New York the next day, which was unfortunate, but it was a good trip.
She came and visited me again in New York when it was getting pretty cold, they lost her luggage and got it back just in time for her to go home. That trip we went to Saratoga Springs and saw some of the coolest houses I've ever seen, we had our very first dinner and a movie date, went to Johnny Rocket's and saw The Incredibles. We also went to downtown Albany on Sunday morning before her flight out and it was the most empty place I've ever seen in my life, in the whole downtown building, the whole city center, all the businesses around the Egg, even McDonalds and Starbucks were closed, there wasn't a person on the streets for a couple of miles in any direction. It was very strange. I saw Melissa on her way and started waiting for Thanksgiving.
We both came home for Thanksgiving and spent a good time together with Melissa's family and mine.
I couldn't afford a Christmas flight so I spent Christmas with my aunt Ann in Greenwood Lake, which was fun save the fact that back in California Melissa went to the Emergency room with a bad rash, sore throat, trouble breathing, horrible headaches, and exhaustion. On Christmas day. Turned out that some antibiotics they had given her in Georgia had reacted with her mononucleosis and it had gotten pretty bad. For the record Julia, this was the third time your state tried to kill my fiance. It tried to kill me once too, a tree almost fell on Daniel and I one night when we were camping in 2003.
She was in the hospital for almost a week, they almost delayed her graduation for three months and at one point they thought they saw a shadow in her lung. What the crap? Anyway, I flew down to Georgia to take care of her for a few days in very early January, we met in Jacksonville yet again and this time didn't quite have as much fun, what with Melissa thinking she was going to die and everything.
I went back to New York again only for a couple of weeks before Melissa graduated and we made our glorious return to California.
Melissa can fill you in on the details of training, sufficed to say it was really hard, emotionally more than anything being 3000 miles from home. Two weeks after she left on a Saturday she was experiencing the 'Day From Hell.' Physical training with a guy she said was like the T-1000 in his unstoppableness and mercilessness. Those are my words, but that's what she meant. I was in San Diego at the Shredd Dog surf camp that day... (Melissa: Let's just say I wondered if having my face in the mud all day was really worth it. The next day the only thing that didn't hurt was the hair on my head).
We wrote letters and talked on the phone a lot, really got to know each other. I started to learn Spanish and Pete (my employer at the time) started to make noise about going to New York to build a house or two. Melissa found a cool Baptist Church on the 'happening' place around her Georgia home, a nice traditional Church on St. Simons Island with good music and good preaching. A month or so after she got there she also found an unlisted Starbucks at the resort on St. Simons. It was a minimalist little stand, but it saw so little business that Melissa convinced the girl who worked there to make her a java chip frappacino (the favorite drink of Melissa Bravo). Everytime the Starbuck's girl saw her she would start making her frappacino.
The hurricanes came and a few times she almost had to evacuate a few times. Her phone didn't get any reception in her room so she only talked to me outside and she wasn't going outside during the hurricanes, so I had to wait a long time sometimes to see if she was OK. A few times water started leaking into her room on the 3rd floor.
Pete and I ended up going to New York, and I had scheduled out a weeks vacation to go visit the Peach State, and Melissa decided to come visit me in New York on her first 2 day weekend in three months. So after my first week in New York I drove down from upstate to the City and picked her up. We spent the weekend with my aunt down close to NYC, we visited Connecticut (don't ask me...), went to the very first legitimate mall she had seen in months, saw some New England sights, went to church and almost went to some kind of apple festival. On Sunday before her flight home we went to New York City on Polish day, this says Pete, is where they march down the streets in the wrong direction. It was hard to get around, but we did, we had New York pizza, saw 5th Ave. and even found the worlds greatest Macy's. I'm rather surprised that I was able to extract her before her flight. On our way out, once we found our way through the marching Polish, I was driving down a one way street that was really more of an alleyway with cars parked on each side. I was going thirty down this street, and it frequently crossed major streets where people were crossing - even on red. A guy got behind me and right up on my tail and started honking at me because I wasn't going fast enough. Crazy. He passed me by going in the little strip where cars were parked. Crazy.
Two weeks later I went down to Georgia, which for the record, is a lot warmer than New York. I came in to Jacksonville so we went to the downtown there, I kind of wanted to go to a place called Ruth's Chris steakhouse, best steaks ever, but only knew that it was on the river. We parked at the Riverwalk, figuring that we could find it from there. We found a Hooters, but it turns out that Ruth's Chris is on the other side of the river. We had dinner at a nice place anyway, right there looking out over the water. Melissa had warned me about service in the south and sure enough, dinner took some two and a half hours. After we ate we went to the square there on the Riverwalk and enjoyed some live blues for a bit.
Over the weekend we went to Anastasia State Park, where there are some nice beaches, only it rained 20 minutes after we got there, so we went to St. Augustine, home of the oldest fort in the country, there was free admission and they fired a cannon into the bay. It was pretty cool. We explored St. Simon's island the next day and I enjoyed some of the most delicious corn bread I've ever had. We went to Savannah the day after that and explored the historic (read: tourist) district. We got lost on the way out and ended up in some fairly frightening neighborhoods.
Melissa had to go to training for the rest of the week, so we stayed local, I explored Brunswick and the Wal-Mart. I went running near the hotel and almost stepped on a snake the first day. That was fun. I watched a lot of Magnum P.I. too.
The next weekend we drove an hour to the very south east part of Georgia and took a ferry out to Cumberland Island, which is an island where the Carnagies used to have an estate, so there is a giant ruined mansion and other estate things, stables, trellises, storehouses, etc. There are also lots of wild horses around, we saw some of those, but no alligators. I never see alligators, it's so disappointing. I had to go back to New York the next day, which was unfortunate, but it was a good trip.
She came and visited me again in New York when it was getting pretty cold, they lost her luggage and got it back just in time for her to go home. That trip we went to Saratoga Springs and saw some of the coolest houses I've ever seen, we had our very first dinner and a movie date, went to Johnny Rocket's and saw The Incredibles. We also went to downtown Albany on Sunday morning before her flight out and it was the most empty place I've ever seen in my life, in the whole downtown building, the whole city center, all the businesses around the Egg, even McDonalds and Starbucks were closed, there wasn't a person on the streets for a couple of miles in any direction. It was very strange. I saw Melissa on her way and started waiting for Thanksgiving.
We both came home for Thanksgiving and spent a good time together with Melissa's family and mine.
I couldn't afford a Christmas flight so I spent Christmas with my aunt Ann in Greenwood Lake, which was fun save the fact that back in California Melissa went to the Emergency room with a bad rash, sore throat, trouble breathing, horrible headaches, and exhaustion. On Christmas day. Turned out that some antibiotics they had given her in Georgia had reacted with her mononucleosis and it had gotten pretty bad. For the record Julia, this was the third time your state tried to kill my fiance. It tried to kill me once too, a tree almost fell on Daniel and I one night when we were camping in 2003.
She was in the hospital for almost a week, they almost delayed her graduation for three months and at one point they thought they saw a shadow in her lung. What the crap? Anyway, I flew down to Georgia to take care of her for a few days in very early January, we met in Jacksonville yet again and this time didn't quite have as much fun, what with Melissa thinking she was going to die and everything.
I went back to New York again only for a couple of weeks before Melissa graduated and we made our glorious return to California.
Weekends
Invitations to everyone in the state of California won't go out for another week or so, but we assembled nearly all of them in 11 grueling hours on Saturday. We printed the invitations, response cards, directions, hotel and travel information, cut everything up, assembled it, stamped them and addressed them. It took a while and I think we escaped pretty mistake free, but if you receive a Spanish invitation, or directions, we apologize.
So really all we still need to make are our table settings, glasses, favors and flowers. Most of that has been outsourced, but holy cow weddings are a lot of work.
I don't really want to complain the whole post, it was fun, just tiring, we're having a great time. There was a Mythbusters marathon on for most of the day and it turns out that talking on your cell phone while you drive is as dangerous, or perhaps more dangerous, than driving while drunk. I still don't believe it.
So really all we still need to make are our table settings, glasses, favors and flowers. Most of that has been outsourced, but holy cow weddings are a lot of work.
I don't really want to complain the whole post, it was fun, just tiring, we're having a great time. There was a Mythbusters marathon on for most of the day and it turns out that talking on your cell phone while you drive is as dangerous, or perhaps more dangerous, than driving while drunk. I still don't believe it.
Friday, January 20, 2006
Invitations, Dresses, Paint and Pianos
We are almost done putting the wedding invitations together. They look nice but it been taking a long time to assemble them. Hopefully this weekend we can have an assembly line of postage stamping and envelope stuffing. By the way, postage has been raised 3 cents for our invitations so that was kind of a hassle, every invitation will now have no less than three stamps. At one point I thought I had thrown away all the stamps... I was not that happy. Not happy at all. But thankfully, my mom had hidden them away in her closet without my knowing.
I got fitted for my wedding dress, which was a lot of fun but it took over an hour. Which reminds me that I need to break in my shoes... The seamstress has to literally take apart the dress to hem it, she can have fun with that.
My mom, Nohema and Jesse's Grandma are putting together our silverware and favors. My sister-in-law, Nohema, is so creative. She is decorating everyone's toasting glasses with flowers and ribbons. They look so nice!
We are starting to kick things into gear like meeting with the wedding coordinator, limos, musicians, and cake stuff. We are also deciding on colors to paint our walls in our apartment, since I am the the paint-picking-ninja-queen.
On another note, don't let a piano stand fall on your keyboard because it will break it. *cough* Kevin. *cough*
I got fitted for my wedding dress, which was a lot of fun but it took over an hour. Which reminds me that I need to break in my shoes... The seamstress has to literally take apart the dress to hem it, she can have fun with that.
My mom, Nohema and Jesse's Grandma are putting together our silverware and favors. My sister-in-law, Nohema, is so creative. She is decorating everyone's toasting glasses with flowers and ribbons. They look so nice!
We are starting to kick things into gear like meeting with the wedding coordinator, limos, musicians, and cake stuff. We are also deciding on colors to paint our walls in our apartment, since I am the the paint-picking-ninja-queen.
On another note, don't let a piano stand fall on your keyboard because it will break it. *cough* Kevin. *cough*
Saturday, January 07, 2006
The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am.
So we have three months now until the wedding and things are progressing well. We have, or know we have access to most of the stuff we're going to need for the ceremony and reception, we just need to make everything, invitations, favors, and table settings, and it all takes time. Thankfully Melissa's mom and sister in law have both volunteered to work for us while we're at work, so that should be done sooner rather than later.
In other news we bought a big fancy California King sized mattress today that promises to make us late for work on a regular basis. We also spent all afternoon looking at apartments, it's kind of amazing the difference in quality a couple hundred bucks makes. For right now we're looking to move into The Bentons, which are pretty cool, complete with a Starbucks downstairs. I think that's kind of like an alcoholic moving in over a bar... but I digress.
In short, we're getting stuff done and not really behind on anything so that's good right?
In other news we bought a big fancy California King sized mattress today that promises to make us late for work on a regular basis. We also spent all afternoon looking at apartments, it's kind of amazing the difference in quality a couple hundred bucks makes. For right now we're looking to move into The Bentons, which are pretty cool, complete with a Starbucks downstairs. I think that's kind of like an alcoholic moving in over a bar... but I digress.
In short, we're getting stuff done and not really behind on anything so that's good right?
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Holidays
We've recovered from Christmas, sort of. I have to go back to work tomorrow, Melissa went back on Thursday. We had an awesome week, spent Christmas Eve enjoying some tamales compliments of the Hermanas Corderos then watching in stunned silence as the nephews - 1 and 2 years old terrorized the living room in a crazed hunt for presents. At midnight we opened all of our presents too, with help from the nephews.
Andrew, the younger one didn't like the way everyone else was opening presents, so he just ripped at them with his teeth, pictures to come of that later.
The next morning we had a good Christmas morning with my family, sadly no children were there to liven the event up. We got lots of good loot, including a blender from our registry compliments of Melina, who wanted to get us the quintessential wedding gift.
We proceeded to three hours of church then had Christmas dinner at my house again. We got a waffle iron from our registry, awesome.
Pretty much since then we've been getting wedding invitations together and collecting dinner ware for said wedding. It's time to kick it into high gear now that we have only 96 days until go time.
More pictures are up, but only a few.
Andrew, the younger one didn't like the way everyone else was opening presents, so he just ripped at them with his teeth, pictures to come of that later.
The next morning we had a good Christmas morning with my family, sadly no children were there to liven the event up. We got lots of good loot, including a blender from our registry compliments of Melina, who wanted to get us the quintessential wedding gift.
We proceeded to three hours of church then had Christmas dinner at my house again. We got a waffle iron from our registry, awesome.
Pretty much since then we've been getting wedding invitations together and collecting dinner ware for said wedding. It's time to kick it into high gear now that we have only 96 days until go time.
More pictures are up, but only a few.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)