I said yes!

Brandon finally asked me to marry him last night and guess what? I SAID YES! This may be confusing to most since we've been engaged for three months and our wedding is in 9 DAYS!, but here's the thing... Because of a whole bunch of timing issues and circumstances with the ring, he's never really had the chance to propose. We just kind of decided to get married and then started planning the wedding. So here's how it went...

I came home from work and he greeted me at the door and invited me in. The house smelled wonderful and there was classical music playing. He led me into the living room where the table is. There was a bouquet of roses on the table along with a candle and dinner. Dinner was ribs and mashed potatoes and wow, was it good. After dinner, he served key lime pie. During dessert he got down on one knee and asked me what I had planned for the rest of my life. I told him that I was planning to spend it with him. It was very sweet and very cute. I'm so excited to get married to him.

Spa Day

I have this fabulous friend named Stacy. She is absolutely wonderful. We met in college, both finance majors. I don't think either one of us could have graduated without the other. In honor of my upcoming wedding, Stacy treated me to a spa day. It was amazing. I'll walk you through from the beginning. We walked in the front door and were immediately treated like royalty. We checked in and were then given a brief tour of the facility. We were then led to the women's area where we were presented with keys to our lockers and comfy slippers. We found a comfy robe in our lockers. Before changing though, we headed to the restaurant for lunch. We split a very yummy chicken basil sandwich and a pesto chicken pizza. It was all delicious. After lunch, we changed into our swimsuits, covered up with our robes and headed first to the jacuzzi. After a brief sit in the jacuzzi, we got out to get ready for our massages. We then headed into the women's lounge to wait for our massages. The women's lounge was a very quiet, peaceful room with super comfy chairs, frosty beverages and soothing music, and a bunch of women laying around in bath robes. Stacy had a maternity massage, while I was treated to a Camelback Signature massage which consisted of aromatherapy, reflexology and hot rock massage...heavenly. After an hour of pure bliss, my massage was over. Sad. We then changed back into our swim suits and headed back out to the pool. The water was the perfect temperature. The weather was great. We ordered fruit smoothies and layed by the pool for a good two hours. The best part about the whole day was spending such great time with Stacy. We just talked and talked and had the best day ever. Thank you Stacy! It was just what I needed in the middle of this chaos called wedding planning.

11 More Days!

Greatest Bridal Shower!

My bridal shower was on Saturday. It was amazing. It was done as a group effort by a few of my friends, namely Jill, Holli, and Janette. It was perfect. The food was amazing. Tons of people came. I got a lot of great gifts including twelve, yes TWELVE pieces of lingerie. Now, some of my friends were very dirty in their gifts, but it was fun. Brandon's aunt was there and she gave me some lingerie, but it wasn't very scandalous. After she saw all the other stuff I got, she was so mad that she didn't get what she really wanted to. She thought that Pollyanna could have worn what she got me. All in all it was a perfect shower and I have the best friends in the whole world who are spoiling me rotten! Thanks girls!

On another topic, (still wedding related), we finally got our invitations in and sent out on Friday. They were delivered at about 11 am on Friday. At noon, Jill, Jackie (my sis-in-law), Lynda (friend), Josh (brother), and Brandon were all at my house folding and stuffing about 400 invitations. They were all in the mail by 1:30 pm. Good job everyone!

We also narrowly avoided another wedding catastrophe this weekend. My flowers are all calla lilies. White ones for the tables and deep red ones for my bouquet (which were a bit difficult to find). Well we ordered them a couple months ago, apparently when my wedding date was still May 19th. I guess we forgot to tell the florist that the date changed to June 2nd because the flowers came in this weekend and the florist wanted to know why we didn't pick them up. Plus, they said they had a hard time finding the red lilies and didn't know if they could get them again by June 2nd. Well my mom talked to the owner of the flower wholesaler today and he didn't make her pay for the first order and said he will be able to get more flowers in time for the real wedding. Isn't it wonderful when people are just nice? Thank you Mr. Flower Man. You are a very nice person.

12 MORE DAYS!!!!

Wedding planning keeps on going...

So, we had a slight catastrophe this week. I was supposed to get the invitations on Monday, but when they came in, they were horrible! The biggest (one of many) was that they spelled Brandon's parents last name wrong. So they are reprinting them and we should get them back on Friday. We have a crew ready to stuff at noon so we can hopefully get them out by Friday afternoon. Most people won't get them before 10 days prior to the wedding, but I guess there's nothing I can do about that. I'm getting my facial today and my spa day on Monday. Don't I have the greatest friends? We finally booked our honeymoon this week. We are spending five nights at a resort in Cancun! Yay! I'm so excited about that. We can lounge around in luxury for a whole week! My bridal shower is this weekend. I'm pretty excited about that too. I think some of my friends might try to embarrass me, but I doubt that's possible. I just can't believe how close it's getting. Before you know it, I'll have been married for 50 years!

23 days to go!

I know I have not been a good blogger. I really want to. I just need to try harder to make time for it. Okay, so I get married in 23 days! Wedding planning started out to be more stressful than I could bear, but I stepped back, took a breath, and relaxed. It's been pretty smooth sailing ever since. I guess the thing that I've noticed so much in this whole process is how little I care about the event and how much I care about the actual marraige. I really could not have chosen a better man. He is truly amazing. He tries so hard to make me happy. He works endlessly on communicating with me and solving all problems before they can cause contention. I'm not saying everything is always perfect, but he tries so hard to understand me and thus inspires me to try hard as well. I never thought I could be this happy.

Okay, now getting past the sappy stuff, I am also excited about the actual wedding day. I have my dress and it's beautiful. It's ivory with darker ivory embroidery and a deep red sash around the wasit. I'm wearing a strand of my great grandmother's pearls for sentiment (plus they actually go with the dress). My colors are cranberry red and ivory. I've designed the reception myself and it will hopefully be different than other receptions I've been to. There will be no trellis or ivy or picket fences. It will actually be quite simple, but hopefully elegant and I'm excited to see how it all comes out.

I think I'm almost done with most of the planning. We're still waiting for the invitations to come in. I am still in search of fabulous earrings. I still need to craft some type of mechanism to hang a bunch of round, Chinese paper lanterns from the ceiling at the reception. I have a dress fitting on Friday. We still have to book the honeymoon too!

Luckily, I have a lot of very talented friends. One of my friends is an extremely talented photographer and has already done some fantasic engagment photos for us. I'm excited to see the wedding pictures that she does. I have another friend who does makeup and skin care. She has provided me with some great products to get my skin ready for the big day and is taking care of my makeup. My cousin does my hair. We've already practiced my wedding hair and I think it will look great! And I have several other friends that are planning my bridal shower and have shopped with me and have planned with me. I am very lucky.

23 more days!