Bachelorette Party!

This weekend I traveled to Charleston for my bachelorette party! It was short, but sweet, and I had an amazing time with three of my favorite people!

Friday night, I got a late start home from work, so I didn't get home until 5:45. I ate a quick dinner, packed up the car, and rushed out the door at 6:15 to go pick up Pearl. We left her house around 7 pm. Google maps told us it would be a 5.5 hour drive, but we didn't make any stops, and we ended up getting into Charleston around midnight (half an hour earlier than expected). Amy and Michelle were already there, they had gotten in a little before us after driving for most of the day. We pretty much just went to bed, haha, we were all exhausted from traveling!

Saturday we got up around 9:30 and headed out to explore Charleston. My sister made me wear a sash that said "Bachelorette" and a pin that said "Bride-to-be", and she and the bridesmaids wore nametags that said "Bachelorette". Since Cara and Ilana couldn't come, my sister had brought little stuffed animals (a dog for Cara and a monkey for Ilana) to represent them! She made nametags for them, and they came everywhere with us that day, riding in people's purses :-D

We went to a local diner for brunch, then walked around for a while, stopped in a tourist shop to pick up a free map, and explored the market, which was really cool! They had all kinds of homemade crafts as well as some more touristy stuff (tshirts, etc.). We all got magnets that say "Who Let the Girls Out? Charleston, SC", and I got some little gifts for a few people (a bar of soap with a toy car in it for the little boy I babysit for, a bracelet for Ilana, and a Yankees picture for my dad). There was a really nice older man who was selling sports pictures (where I got the one for my dad), and he told us stories about when he was a kid growing up in Charleston, and how they used to go into the back room of the church (because it had stone floors so it was nice and cool in the summers) and listen to baseball games on the radio. He had some great stories!

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at the general store and got some freshly made ice cream - it was SO GOOD! Then we hung out in the hotel for a few hours, played board games and relaxed, until it was time to head out to dinner. We went to a really good seafood restaurant called Coast, where we had a delicious dinner, and then stopped at a candy store on the way back to the hotel so Pearl could get some gummy bears. We played one more game, and then went to bed early.

On Sunday (yesterday), Amy and Michelle got up and left really early. Pearl and I slept a little later, but got on the road around 10 am.

It was a great weekend!

This week we need to get our table arrangements figured out so my mom can get final numbers to the florist. I also need to finish up the bridal party gifts, and next weekend we are going to Florida because Marcus's mom insisted that we come down to have an auf ruf (Jewish thing - basically you attend Saturday morning services a week or two before your wedding, and the rabbi says a special blessing over you and then people throw candy at you, haha). Things are getting crazy! It is SO CLOSE!

Here are some pictures from the bachelorette party:

April Showers bring May Flowers, but February Showers bring Weddings!

This weekend, Marcus and I traveled up to Maryland for my shower (which of course also included a busy weekend of wedding planning). We flew up Friday night, got in late, but still had time to discuss plans for the weekend before going to bed. Two of my awesome cousins from Israel happened to be in the States this week, so they ended up coming to my shower! It was great to get to see them.

Saturday, we slept in, then I went and got my hair trimmed for the last time before the wedding. Then we went over to the Bolger Center to choose where exactly on the grounds our ceremony will be. We found a really pretty spot, convenient to the parking lot and the building where the reception will be, so that went really well! I also got to check the mail - so at least we got one day's worth of excitement over receiving RSVPs! After that, we headed to my cousin's pom competition (she's a senior in high school, and is her pom squad's captain this year!). That was fun, although they didn't win. Then we went to Mama Lucia (an Italian restaurant) for dinner, where we ran into our florist randomly! When we got home, the adults went to bed, and Marcus and I stayed up talking to my cousin Noa until after midnight.

Sunday, we slept in again, then headed over to my aunt's house for my shower. I was a little nervous about the shower, since my aunts are crazy and you never know what will happen when they plan something, lol, but it turned out to be really fun, and it was GREAT to see everybody! We played lots of fun games, ate yummy food, and I got a bunch more awesome gifts. Overall, a great success! Meanwhile, my dad took "the guys" (Marcus, my sister's boyfriend, some family friends, and my cousin) bowling...I was SO jealous! After the shower, my sister and her boyfriend and my Israeli cousins all got on the bus to head back to New York. That evening, my mom and I spent a lot of time going through pictures to find a couple I was looking for for various wedding-related projects (one to go on the guest book table, and two for various parts of my sister's present). We also went out to dinner, even though we were still full from the shower, lol. Then we came home, watched a couple of home videos, and went to bed.

Monday morning, we got up a little earlier and headed to the florist. My parents had changed our centerpieces, so we wanted to see the new ones, and we ended up making a couple of changes ourselves. But I think everything is finalized now with the flowers, so that's good! Then we went home, ate lunch, and played cards until it was time to head to the airport. I also spent some time looking online for a barrette to use in my hair for the wedding.

It was a busy weekend, but a lot of fun, and things are getting much more finalized now! I can't believe there's only 6 weeks left until the wedding, it seems like we still have SO much to do!

Some BIG Checks (finally)!

The ongoing Invitations Saga is finally over! This morning, I took the invitations to the post office and dropped them off to be hand-canceled and mailed. I am SO relieved to finally have them out. Now we wait for responses. I'm jealous of all the people on The Knot whose RSVPs are coming to them - my mom INSISTED that our RSVPs go to her, so instead of getting to check the mail excitedly every day, I just have to wait impatiently for my mom to email me updated lists of who has responded. I also have mixed feelings about the RSVPs...while I am very excited to be done with the invitations, and excited to get responses and finalize the fact that people will actually show up (lol), part of me is worried, because I know that some people won't be able to come, and I will inevitably be disappointed by some of the "no"s. At this point, it's still POSSIBLE that each individual person we sent invitations to could say "yes"...but once they RSVP "no", that's it. I'm weird, lol.

Another big check - last weekend we took our ketubah to Michael's to figure out framing. We weren't sure how we were going to do it, because we want to display the ketubah during the reception (so we wanted it to be in a frame for that), but we need to have it out of the frame to sign it at the ceremony. Well, the lady at Michael's was VERY helpful, apparently they do lots of ketubahs, and she suggested that we go ahead and get it framed, and just leave the glass out of the frame so we can sign it IN the frame, and then after the wedding we can get the glass put in. Brilliant! So that's what we decided to do. While at Michael's, we also purchased a couple of 8x10 frames for our baby photos that will be displayed on the guest book table at the reception.

Since the last time I posted, several things I talked about have been completed also! We got the marriage license, no problem, so that's ready to go. I also attended all FOUR of my dress fittings, so now my dress actually fits me, and is nice and crisp and clean (she cleaned it for me as well). It is back in my possession now, hanging in my closet until the wedding.

We also finished compiling a CD of classical music to be played while our guests are arriving to the ceremony location. We will have live musicians for the ceremony itself, but since we wanted a mix of classical and Jewish music, we decided to hire musicians to play the Jewish music (they are Klezmer musicians actually) and make a CD of classical music to be played before the ceremony begins.

A week from tomorrow night, we will be flying up to Maryland again - this time for my bridal shower. I'm excited to see everyone who will be there! And of course, my mom has our whole weekend fully booked with other wedding-related stuff, too. I'll be getting my hair cut for the final time before the wedding, we'll be going to the florist to finalize some stuff, and we'll also be going to the venue to decide on the exact spot where we want to have the ceremony (the grounds are HUGE, and they say that you can do it anywhere on the grounds). I'll definitely be posting again when we get back from that trip, to write about the shower and also other stuff we get done between now and then!

Little Things

Our planning has kind of stagnated recently, and now that we're officially in 2011, I'm really feeling the pressure to get stuff done! We have gotten a few things done though...

1. Favors and cake topper - we ordered these a few weeks ago, and they have both arrived to my parents' house! My mom says the favors came out GREAT!

2. Dress fitting - I went to my first dress fitting on Saturday. On recommendations from people on The Knot, I went to Dora Baker, who runs a bridal dress alterations business out of her home here in Atlanta. She was very nice and helpful. She has to let my dress out a bit at the waist so that it will fall correctly before she can see what else needs to be done. I go back on January 20th to get the rest done (hem and bustle), and my dress should be ready for pickup on January 27th!

3. Bridesmaids dresses - ALL of my bridesmaids have finally ordered their dresses! This is a huge sigh of relief for me, since I had been really stressing about it. But it looks like they will all come in with a couple of weeks to spare before the wedding :)

4. Photo montage - Marcus and I went through a whole bunch of photos and finally narrowed down to 100 the ones we want in our photo montage (which will be shown at the rehearsal dinner). We will be mailing them to the videographer this week!

5. Maid of honor gift - I had already bought gifts for my bridesmaids a while back, but I FINALLY came up with a good idea for my maid of honor. I purchased her gift last week, and it should arrive sometime this week.

6. Invitations - this is an ongoing saga :-P My mom keeps changing her mind about things, and I was ready to kill her at one point last week. But we are OH SO CLOSE to finally being done with the invitations! We just have to send all of our spreadsheets to Marcus's dad (once they are completely finalized) and then they will begin printing! I really hope we get them out by the end of the month...

7. Marriage license - Montgomery County, Maryland (where we'll be getting married) is AWESOME, because their marriage license process is SO simple! We had to call their office to request a "non-resident marriage license application", which they promptly mailed to us. We have filled it out, and just need to sign it in front of a notary public. We were going to do that today, but everything is closed due to the snow, so we'll try again tomorrow. Once we sign it, we just have to mail it back along with the $55 fee, and we'll be all set!

So my to-do list is slowly but surely shrinking. Once we're done with the invitations, I'll feel a lot better. I think that's really the last BIG thing. After that, it's all details.

Another Whirlwind Weekend

Most of the stuff I have to mention happened this weekend, but I'll start with something we did the weekend before - ring shopping!

We went back to Jared, where we got my engagement ring, to look at wedding bands. We ended up finding exactly what we wanted, so we went ahead and got them! They are very simple bands - plain, solid white gold - and pretty thin (since I have small fingers, lol, and also because the thicker one looked weird with my engagement ring, since it also has a thin band). Marcus also decided he liked a thinner band as opposed to a thicker one, so our rings are just one size (thickness) apart! But several finger sizes apart ;-)

So, on to this weekend. We flew down to Florida late Thursday night, and pretty much went to bed as soon as we got in, since it was almost 1 am. Friday we slept in a little, then got up and headed over to Marcus's dad's printing shop to try to finalize our invitations! After much discussion, we decided to change a few things - the color of the ink and backing paper (because the paper we had chosen wasn't the greatest quality, although it matched our color perfectly), and the type of paper the actual invitation will be on. We also fixed a few wording things and figured out the design for the RSVP cards and hotel information cards. I called my mom to let her know, and she started getting all up in arms over the envelopes, and how we needed to have outer and inner envelopes instead of just the one envelope. I said that I didn't think we needed two envelopes, it seems like such a waste, since people just throw out the envelopes anyway. I reminded my mom (as she told me to when we began the wedding planning process) that this is MY wedding, and so what I want should matter. She got all huffy and proclaimed that while it is my wedding, she is paying for it, and she "is the one inviting all the people", so she would like the invitations to be "appropriate". My response to that was, "I assure you, the invitations will be APPROPRIATE, whether we have one envelope or two!" We got off the phone, and Marcus's dad said that for the size envelope we are using, it's very hard to get inner envelopes, so he thought we just needed the one. Later, though, he and my mom emailed back and forth and he agreed to look for the inner envelopes :-P

We went to lunch with Marcus's dad and Rochelle, then headed back to his mom's house, where we hung out for a while, then got ready and headed out to the temple for Friday night services, followed by dinner. We came back and went to sleep.

Saturday morning, we got up early and headed back to the temple for the morning service (it was Marcus's stepbrother's Bar Mitzvah, the real reason for our trip down there). There was a nice luncheon afterwards, and then we headed back to Marcus's mom's house again for a few hours. During those few hours, I responded to about 12 emails from my mom (who I was about ready to kill at this point) about cocktail napkins and other things that I care equally little about. We did get some stuff done - picked out our cake topper, and semi-finalized our guest list spreadsheet (we changed all the names to how they will look on the envelopes - but if we do end up having an inner envelope, we will have to add another column for the names as they will appear on THAT envelope), as well as looking at designs for cocktail napkins, kippot and bathroom towels.

Saturday night, we headed back to the temple again for the Bar Mitzvah party. It went late into the night, and was a lot of fun, though we were exhausted by the end!

Sunday morning, we got up and headed back to the temple yet AGAIN for our Engagement Party #3! It was a brunch party, and it was really nice, with lots of yummy food. My parents and sister were originally going to come down for this weekend too, but they ended up not coming, as my dad has been having some health issues and was told he is not supposed to fly. So it turned out that my great-aunt (who lives about 30 minutes away from Marcus's family in Florida) was the only member of my family in attendance, and the rest was Marcus's family. I was a little worried that they (my great-aunt and her husband) wouldn't enjoy it, since they didn't really know anybody, but we introduced them around, and my sister told me last night that my great-aunt had called my mom to let her know that they had a great time! We also got a bunch more gifts, and luckily, Marcus's aunt Rebeca, who lives in Atlanta and had driven down (she's staying for the rest of the week), offered to drive them back up to Atlanta for us and store them at her house.

We flew back to Atlanta last night and got home around 10:30 pm. It was a crazy whirlwind of a weekend, but at least we got some stuff done! I was hoping to come out of this weekend with the invitations completely finalized, which didn't happen. However, Marcus's dad told us that while he can't start printing them until we have EVERYTHING finalized (including the spreadsheets), once he starts printing, they will only take about a week to be ready, and a few more days to get to us through the mail. Since we're aiming to send them out in mid-to-late January, we actually still have plenty of time to finalize them. And since they are also pre-printing our envelopes, we can start mailing them out as soon as we get them, without having to worry about addressing them first.

Food, glorious food!

This weekend, we traveled up to Maryland for Thanksgiving and got a bunch of wedding stuff done! On Friday morning, I went to do my trial hair styling. We tried a few different things, and we decided to go with a very simple, but pretty, style. My hair will be blown dry straight, and will be part up and part down (just a top layer up, and the rest down). I LOVE my hair straight, so I'm excited!

Later, on Friday afternoon, we went to the Bolger Center to do our final menu tasting. You may remember I wrote earlier about how they screwed up our first tasting, and we didn't get to taste everything we wanted to, so we had to schedule this second tasting. Since then, my mom got fed up with our contact person's lack of communication, and switched to a new contact person, Debbie. We met Debbie for the first time when we arrived at this tasting. She's a bit dryer and more abrupt than our old contact person, but she seems much more together, and according to my mom, she's a much better communicator. We tasted a few more delicious dishes, and made our final menu choices! We will be offering three entrees: filet mignon, sea bass (which is absolutely amazing), and butternut squash ravioli (vegetarian entree, which in MY opinion was even BETTER than the sea bass! I was initially going to get the fish entree, but now I think I am going to get the ravioli! I don't even like squash, and I loved it, so that should tell you something about how good it is!). There's also a yummy field greens salad, and our appetizers will be coconut chicken, crab cakes (hey, it's in Maryland, this is a requirement! lol), lamb skewers, and a really delicious brie & cranberry pocket thingy. Everything is really tasty, and I am very excited about that!

At Thanksgiving dinner with my family on Thursday, we also firmed up plans with my aunt for my bridal shower, which will be in Maryland the Sunday of Presidents Day weekend in February. We were originally going to do it on Saturday, but my cousin has a poms competition that day, so instead, everyone will come into town for the weekend, we'll all go to her competition on Saturday, and the shower on Sunday! It's going to be a traditional "all-girls" shower, so that should be interesting.

I also got my veil this morning! When we got back last night, there was a package slip in our mailbox, so I went to the leasing office and picked up TWO packages - one was a bunch of books my mom got me for my birthday/Hanukkah, and the other was my veil! It's exactly what I expected, very simple and pretty, and a perfect length! I haven't tried it on with my dress yet, but that's what fittings are for, right? As I mentioned in my last post (I think...), I ordered my veil from Etsy, and I couldn't be happier with that choice. The same veil in a store cost about $250, and I got it for under $50! I highly recommend Etsy, and especially "simplebeautyveils", the seller I bought the veil from.

That's about all for now. Next big step is invitations - I will be working on that this week, and hopefully we'll have our final order in in the next couple of weeks! We're sending out the invitations in January, so I'm starting to get excited about that.

Engagement Party #2, and a few more checks

My parents came into town this weekend for our Atlanta engagement party, which I'll get into in a few minutes. Naturally, since they were here, we got a few more wedding planning things done, too.

My parents arrived on Friday night. We picked them up at the airport, then they went to their hotel and we all went to bed. Saturday morning, we got up bright and early and headed out around 10 am. First we went to Men's Wearhouse, where we figured out tuxes for the groomsmen and Marcus got fitted for his tux. The groomsmen are going to have blue (matching the bridesmaids' dress color) vests and ties, and Marcus will have a white vest and black tie.

Next we headed out to shop for veils. I had already found one that I really liked online (on Etsy, which is an amazing website - if you've never seen it, check it out!), but my mom insisted that I needed to go try on a few veils in person first so that I knew what I wanted. The first place we went was Bridals by Lori, which had been recommended by several people on the Atlanta boards on The Knot. Apparently this store is featured on Say Yes to the Dress, so it was fairly busy, but we were able to get good service. The store was ridiculously huge (THREE floors!), but we found our way to the veils department, and started looking around ourselves. Eventually, a salesperson noticed us and sent one of the managers over to help us. I tried on a couple of veils, and my mom quickly realized that I already knew what I wanted. The veil I liked at this store would have cost about $250, and the one I found on Etsy costs about $40...so my mom agreed that getting it online was the way to go!

We stopped for a nice lunch, then decided that we didn't really need to go to the second bridal shop we had planned on, since we had already pretty much figured out the veil thing. So instead, we went back to our apartment, where we spent several hours working on some smaller wedding items, including programs, reception music checklist for the DJ, a photo list for the photographer, and the guest list for my bridal shower. Then Marcus and I got changed, and we headed to the hotel so my parents could change for the party.

The engagement party was at Marcus's aunt and uncle's house, and it was for Marcus's GA family - the Atlanta and Savannah contingents. I had met most of them before, but not all, so it was fun to meet some more of his Savannah family! And my parents were meeting most of them for the first time, so that was fun too. His family and my family are so similar, it's a little scary! They're both loud, fun, and CRAZY! Our wedding reception is going to be insane (in a good way!)! Anyway, we ate lots of yummy food, talked a lot, and opened more gifts - including our food processor, which I am SO excited about! It was a great party, Marcus's aunts (the planning committee) did a great job! So, two engagement parties down, one to go (which will be in Florida in December, for Marcus's FL family).

On Sunday, we went to an early brunch with my parents, Marcus's aunt, and one of our friends. Then we came back to the apartment and hung out watching a couple of Marcus's home videos before taking my parents to the airport for their flight home. It was a good visit, both productive and fun/relaxing (for once).

Another thing I've been working on lately - my bridal shower! My crazy Aunt Jenny finally emailed me to start planning it. Right now we're looking at Presidents Day weekend, and this will be a traditional "girls only" shower. I emailed her a preliminary guest list complete with addresses, so we'll see how the planning goes. I'm a little scared, honestly, my aunts are nuts, so I'm kind of expecting anything and everything at this shower, haha. It should be fun, though, so I'm excited.

Next on the wedding planning docket: Thanksgiving weekend! We will be traveling up to Maryland for Thanksgiving, and have several big things on the agenda, including our (hopefully) final menu tasting, which should allow us to finalize and order our invitations! Stay tuned!