Put yourself in someone elses shoes

Deciding to have an outdoors wedding means you have to do things a little differently from the traditional inside wedding. I have been to a few outdoors weddings, of course each one different in their own unique way and noticed how some weddings have you dressed for the wedding, meaning wearing heels standing on grass or some fit to comfort and chose flats, or wedges. For me, I cant decide if I want to do heels or flats. The wedding will be outside and the ground may be sturdy or may sink through. I don't want my bridesmaids to be uncomfortable to whole time, or have someone ruin a pair of shoes, that is why I will "put myself in their shoes". I have an idea of what I want, so after I speak to the ladies I will up date my blog with the final decision.

Dresses for my Ladies

Since I was a little girl I have always dreamed of that perfect wedding, now that I am planning my wedding I realized there is a lot to do and getting it to perfect may take a lot of work. One area I am very settle with is the bridesmaid dresses, I want my girls to be able to afford what they wear, and be able to wear it again, I would hate to see their dresses not be used again. I have lots of ideas to what I want but finding it is going to take some time. I am going for a simple black dress, knee length or a little higher with a pink silk ribbon around the high waist. I have also thought about doing multi colored, but I think I need to pick out who is in my wedding and how many I am having first. Here is a look at what I am thinking about for dress ideas:

What do you think about my idea for bridesmaid dresses??

Save the date

I know it has been a while now since I have last posted, Sorry about that. TJ and I wanted time to relax and enjoy the engagement with out any planning, talking or arrangement setting. Over the holiday we engaged in lots of wedding talk, not only with each other but also with our families. Since we are going away to get married we thought  having a Wedding in 2012 was perfect timing for everyone to save and take time off. Then the hard part, picking the day, we have thought about this up and down and just never really set anything in stone, and having it in 2012 why should we. Well, since 2011 is just a few days away we thought now would be the perfect time to set that date in stone. We would love to have you all help us celebrate our day on June 9th, 2012 in Minnesota. We will be celebrating our Wedding together with close family and friends in the beautiful state of Minnesota at the State Park. We will have a lot of things to do prior to the wedding along with a reception that follows. For those who would like to join us but cant make the trip we will be having a reception back home, which will take place on June 23, 2012. I will keep you all updated for more details, I am looking forward to the wedding planning!

Location... SET

Before TJ and I even got engaged we talked about how we both want to go away to get married. Sharing this I thought would make picking a location easier on us. However that wasn't the case at all. Once we got engaged we started talking more about where we were going to go to get married. I always wanted to get married on the beach somewhere, after going to Hawaii to stand in my Best Friends wedding made me want that even more. TJ said that he wanted to be married at Lambeau Field (not a biased pick at all :) So of course we started looking at locations that we both had in mind. My love for Marilyn Monroe led me to Coronado Island, located right outside San Diego. But of course after looking into it the price at that location was out of our range. After talking about it and sharing how much this wedding is going to mean to us we started thinking about "Our Future". Something that we both wanted was to be able to visit that location often and even share that location with family and future family members. Given that TJ and his family have a cabin in Minnesota brought a great idea to the table. Just 45 minutes away from the cabin is, Itasca State Park. Once we thought of this the planning started to fall into place. Itasca is only an 8 hour drive, given that alot of our family and friends live around here made this location even more real. TJ's family takes a trip up there every year, and asking our guests to make an 8 hour road trip is a little more affordable for all. This is a place that TJ and I are able to visit yearly and even take our future family to visit and share what we did one day. I wanted to share a few photos with everyone and will up date you more on what to expect of Itasca State Park.

Center Pieces

Since TJ and I are 100% set on going away for a wedding, I wanted to make it easy on us with decorations. Something that I have been looking at is center pieces for the tables at the reception. I was again thinking simple, easy and affordable. Keep in mind the colors on the sample picture are not our colors but I really like this idea. What do you think?

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Bring on the Planning in COLORS

Now that we have been engaged for a few weeks I feel like I can breathe a little. A lot of things have to be put into place when planning a wedding. Location, date, time, colors, dresses, decorations, who’s in the wedding, and the reception. I still haven’t found the answers to all those questions but something that we had come to an agreement on is our wedding colors. Since my Fiancé has a "SICK" obsession with the Green Bay Packers, and a "STRONG" hate towards the Vikings, I never knew that he would be biased in his color choices. I was told NO purple, no purple because we want to get married in Minnesota and that would just look too much like the ENEMY. So I said ok I will not pick purple to be in our wedding but he can’t pick green or gold. After a battle back and forth on the colors we finally came up with an idea of the colors we want to have in our wedding. What do you think of Pink, Blue and Black?

        

Learning to Give

Tj and I are very different when it comes to watching TV. There are some shows that we enjoy together like Pawn Stars, The Office, Community (give it a try), Parks and Rec and football. To bad those shows didn’t air everyday then watching TV together wouldn’t be a pain. I love watching reality TV and drama shows, Real housewives, Teen Mom (don’t judge), Real World, 90210, Gossip Girl and the bachelor/bachelorette. Tj on the other hand watches SPORTS!! I'm sure most of you can relate now that it is football session. Over the past few months, TJ and I have been giving a little more. You watch an hour of RHONJ I will watch ESPN for an hour; seems to work well for us. Something that has helped me get into football with him is playing fantasy football. I have learned a lot about it, helps us out by getting together on a Sunday, since that is the only thing on TV during the day at our house. But don’t just think that I give into him, little does anyone know that he actually gets into my shows with me :)

Implementing the term "Fiancé"

An engagement is a promise to marry, and also the period of time between proposal and marriage something that everyone knows about. Getting engaged not only means planning a wedding, wearing the ring and preparing to spend the rest of your lives together but it also brings that awkward new title to the table "Fiancé". At first it was really hard to remember to call each other my fiancé, lets face it the word it weird. After saying it a few times I felt like I gained 10 years. Every once in a while we would slip up and call each other boyfriend or girlfriend, not thinking that it was a big deal, but getting engaged makes that a big deal. After a very lazy day together and having fun with each other and the word "Fiancé", we have adapted a new way of saying it. Whether I am calling for my Fiancé directly or speaking to someone about him I tend to use a French accent when saying Fiancé, it adds some fun to it and makes it easier to say. The way that we say it with a little French accent is "fee-ahn-SAY."

"Our Story"

Something that we all do and don’t even know that we do is ask the newly engaged couple, "How, did it happen?" I am going to share with all of you how TJ asked me to marry him. TJ and I have been together now for 2 years. On September 12th, was our 2 year anniversary. TJ's nephew got baptized on Sunday which filled our day with plans. Thinking ahead, TJ and I had planned to spend Friday together since I have Fridays off :) We had made plans to go to the Zoo in the morning and then go to lunch at Blue, what a perfect day we had planned. Then life hits you with one of its great surprises, our 6 month old English bulldog Elwood, wasn’t feeling to well. I picked up on him not being himself so I was spending my "Getting Ready" time watching Elwood, while TJ was getting ready for the day we had planned. A few times TJ had told me to go get in the shower and start getting ready. I started to get ready only to find myself back by his side, we then tried to call the vet at 8:00, only to get turned down for a that day appointment, TJ came back in the room and was irritated that I haven’t moved, worried about Elwood’s condition and a little antsy (only to find out why later). I then started to tell him that I was really worried, Elwood never turns down food, never pees on him self while he is laying in bed and never cries when he has to get up. All of this leads me to have a break down in the living room. At this point TJ is worried with me about the dog, We then both tried to get him up to take him out to go potty.He let out a loud cry, which led me to tears. I then told TJ that I wasn’t going to do anything, I wanted to stay home and watch the dog. He then tried to comfort me and asked what he could do to make me feel better, that’s when I let out the truth "get him into the vet". I then sat back down with him while TJ called the vet; finally, we got him in. We then had an hour from the time we called to the time his appointment was. At this time it is now 12:00, we were suppose to be at the zoo by 9:00 and lunch to follow. Our lunch date to Blue turned into Jimmy Johns in our living room. After we finished up with lunch it was then time to load up Elwood and head to the vet. After arriving they knew that he was in pain, we took him straight into the room and waited. Keep in mind this was a squeezed in appointment, which meant we were going to have to wait. After 2 hours at the vet we finally got the answer we needed all morning, he really was sick, fever of 104 degrees and high white blood cell count. Only $256.00 dollars and 4 medications later we were out and on our way home. In the truck TJ asked me what I wanted to do, and said we still had time to go to the zoo. The only thing I wanted to do was go HOME! Once we got home I got the dogs taken care of, Elwood cant move on his own so we had to set up the living room to hang out in all evening that way we could be right with him. Finally, its time for me to breath, at this time TJ had asked me to come into the living room, when I got in there he grabbed my arm pulled me close to him and gave me a hug, we both started laughing about our day and how everything we had planned to do NEVER got done. He then told me how he was so glad that I was with him and that I mean the world to him and how lucky he is to have me in his life, (dropping down to his knees), I started to cry, I knew what this was and I knew what was next. I started to shake, and looked into his eyes at which I gave him the answer he was waiting for.... "YES" After all was said and done, we then sat on the couch and he told me what he had "Planned". All in all I love how he handled himself given his entire plan for the day was blowing up in his face. The most important thing to me was that he did it at home with our dogs! I wouldn’t of wanted this to happen any other way!

Intro to my blog

Getting engaged is something that everyone looks forward too. You dream of the day, what you will be wearing, where it will happen at what the ring is going to look like and so on. You always think that you are going to know when it’s coming and how you are going to react. Now back to reality, its life and life loves to surprise you with things that aren’t expected. Needless to say most of you already know, but for those who don’t I HATE surprises. I like to sneak and peak at my presents before I receive them, I like to read the end of the book before I start reading it to see if I'm going to like it, I try to find the spoilers to shows so I know how it’s going to end. I like to prepare myself for what is coming. This is something about me that I can’t help and something that my "Fiancé" takes advantage of :)