So little time...

... to keep this blog up to date with everything going on. There's wedding plan stories and teaching stories and homework stories and OSF stories... 


.... but tonight I'll leave you with just this one story: Picture the OSF, spending hours going through his itunes selection, in search for the perfect first dance song. 


He didn't find it. But he had a great time trying to sell me on the pros of dancing to "Sexy Back" and ghetto dancing to some Usher song. Oh, babe. You are too cute sometimes.




Happy 160 days until my wedding!

Things I Currently Love

Stephanie Williams' photography blog and her yellow and gray photo shoots.

Elise Blaha's blog. Her blog is currently devoted to DIY ideas for her own wedding, coming up at the end of this month.

Our (hopefully!) photographer's blog, Studio Castillero. This guy is a friend of Chris' co-worker Cody's, and just from reading his blog, I love him to death already. And his pictures are fabulous.

This blue bracelet. 

I want this blue bracelet. 

Who can tell me where this blue bracelet can be found?

There are two Sarah B's in my life...

... just discovered that today. 


Sarah B. #1 is used-to-be-a-roommate-at-the-Rancho-apartment Sarah who can be found here. 
Sarah B. #2, who I thought this whole time was Sarah B. #1 (for hopefully obvious reasons), is here. 


Sorry, Sarah B. #2 for confusing you with Sarah B. #1! 


I finally caught on with Sarah B. #2's comment about red bridesmaid's dresses... because I was thinking, "Wait a minute... Sarah B.'s bridesmaid's dresses were brown...." Then I scooted on over to new Sarah B.'s blog to see what she was all about. 


And now I wish I'd put more effort into St. Patrick's Day this year. The girl puts everyone to shame.


(Don't tell anyone, but I wasn't even wearing green... and the hair tie I was trying to pass off as teal was in fact blue. And I knew it.)

Things I look forward to during this engagement thingamajig:

1) Gift registries: Give me that scanner gun and take me to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, please!


2) Decluttering: I intend to bring nothing that is not either useful now or was important then into my new life and home. It'll be a fresh start of organized memories and only the clothes I actually wear, the makeup I actually use, and the high school notebooks with cute covers that were actually used as journals.


3) Learning compromise: I'm an idealist, but even I know that marriage isn't all smooth sailing. And even though Chris and I have never really had a fight before, I know we've got differences. And I know we both like to do things our own way. And I'd rather learn how to deal with that now, and utilize that knowledge later.

Just in case you didn't think my life was fabulous enough, guess what Chris and I found at the dollar bins in Target today? A wedding section. No joke, even though when I stumbled upon it and called for Chris, he too was thinking, "Wow, what a liar. Like there'd by a wedding section in the dollar... hey, look, there's a wedding section in the dollar bins!" The stuff had definitely been picked over, but we found what might be the most awesome thing anyone's ever found in the dollar bins: disposable wedding cameras. 

Oh, yeah. We got 20 of them. They only have 12 exposures each, not the standard 24, but they were a dollar. And we were going to have to round some up anyway since our party them is photographs.

Did I mention we've come up with a theme? Yep yep, we have! We decided to go with something that we both enjoy and that people think of when they think of things we like. (That was kind of a tongue twister... I'll wait while you re-read....) And everyone knows we both love photography! We will for sure be incorporating things like photo booths, pictures we've taken, childhood pictures, frames, and hopefully our still-unsure-if-it-works new Polaroid camera. 

It's going to be a pretty rocking party.

Today we headed back down to the Coronado Community Center to pay the first half of our rental agreement, only to find out they close at 5pm on Sundays, and we'd gotten there at 5:36. So we walked around to the water side and sat on the little stone wall outside our reception room and looked out at the water while we discussed some wedding ideas. It was super nice. Let's just hope September 20 is as pretty (but hopefully warmer). 

Oh, yeah, surprise! We changed our wedding date! What happened was that we had only planned to rent half the room, since we have the whole patio to accommodate guests too... and that would have dropped the price in half. But when we signed up for the Saturday that became available, November 13th, we found out you can only rent the whole room on Saturdays. No bueno for us. We'd rather spend the money on other things. So Chris proposed the idea of a Monday wedding, we considered, drew up a guest list, figured out it if people really loved us they would still come, and changed the date on Thursday. 

Funny story. Since I was working at the main office that afternoon, Chris called and spoke to our guy Steve about switching our date. Chris texted me we were good to go. Steve called five minutes later: "So, just wanted you to know I just talked with Chris... he wants to change your date from November 13 to September 20... just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page...." Poor Steve. He must get a lot of grooms calling to to up the date two months! Chris thought it was funny later.

Besides driving to Coronado and accomplishing nothing, we also tried Prevue in Grossmont Center since they are supposedly a carrier of these dresses we really like online. I now remember why I hate Prevue. The store is stuffed full of hot pink dresses and eighteen-year-old sales girls who ignore customers but yell out conversations to each other from behind racks of pink tulle infested hangers. Horrible customer service. And then they couldn't even find the catalog we needed. And then they were closing and we just gave up. I might try them again later in the week, when there should be some adults around.

But all was not lost since we scored those wedding cameras at Target. And that was all due to my beloved roommate Jenna, whose car we happened to park right next to when we arrived at the mall, and who we went looking for in Panera to see if she was studying, and who we found out was actually in the chocolate aisle at Target (for a school presentation of course). So because of Jenna we went to Target, found the cameras, and then walked through the shoe aisle while Chris made me try on all the shoes he liked, until we found a pair I liked and bought them.

Sigh. It's so hard having a fiance who insists I have nice things. (Just kidding, this could get fun.)

And that was our slightly eventful Sunday. I'm a little over the weekend right now. Too much homework and shopping and planning for me. I need my schedule back. (Until Tuesday when I'll be craving the weekend again.)

Happy 162 days until my wedding!

Marrying a designer is hard work.

No joke.


Chris and I have been coming up with more conflict in the last week than in our entire relationship. Apparently all this time when I thought we had the same ideas about everything, I was a little bit right and a little bit wrong. We do have the same ideas- just with different variations. And neither of us likes to back down, darn it!


But aside from all the "I feel that we need to come up with a rich accent color" and "I feel my blue is prettier than your blue" and "I feel you're color blind!" we don't hate each other (yet). And fortunately Mandy did warn me about all of this. Of course, I didn't really believe her... until now. 


But I still love that boy. No question about it. :)


We had an insanely busy Saturday today. Our only real plans were to go to the church rummage sale this morning, to look for fun wedding decor finds, and somehow it escalated into a trip to Michaels, lunch downtown, our reception site to take pictures of the tables, chairs, and corners of the room, down to South Bay to check out Paradise Hills (to see if we'd want to live there), out to Rancho San Diego, and to Friar Tux to check out their suit selection. Because we'd been up late the night before and woken up early for the rummage sale, I pretty much conked out upon our return home and enjoyed an hour long nap while Chris watched Where the Wild Things Are. Then it was back to wedding planning via blogs (we've got a new color scheme to match our new date!) and then a few hours of homework, broken up with watching the last half of an episode of Medium with his roommates when I went downstairs for a coke. 


While I've been doing homework, Chris has been spending hours on a blog update. I think it's his version of the proposal, and I'm super excited to read it from his vantage point. It still amazes me how awesome our proposal was, how perfectly surprised I was, and how he was able to keep it a secret from me for two whole months. Especially with me asking about it every other day.


We scored some good finds at the rummage sale- four or five glass apothecary like jars for the candy bar, which is what I'd been hoping to find for cheap (twenty-five cents!) and a Polaroid camera! It's looking like our theme is going to center around photography, and Chris had the idea last week to have a Polaroid camera on hand to take and add pictures to a display we want to set up. We're not entirely sure the camera works, and film for the thing is going to be a nightmare, but still! It was a cool find. 


Chris just got done with his blog, so I'm off to go read it now! I'll leave you with my current favorite inspiring picture: the yellow and gray wedding party!

Location, location, location.

Wow. What a week. I thought with it being spring break and all I'd get so much done. Turns out, not so much.


But.


We did get one thing done. And that thing was find and book a location for our wedding.


Say hello to Glorietta Bay, where if you will be attending our splenderific (splendid + wonderful + terrific) day, you will be staring out at if you look the OSF and I as we vow it up.

Yes, if you're lucky, one of those white wooden chairs will be yours... on November 13th!


I found this place on Tuesday, on a 10 Greatest Places to get Married in San Diego website. I was a bit skeptical at first, as this is a community center reception hall which tend to not be fantastic... and sometimes are painted funny colors and have linoleum floors. But this one is the Coronado Community Center, and since public building niceness is directly related to property taxes extracted from homeowners in the area, let's just say they're not doing so bad at the Coronado Community Center. 


Here's what the outside patio looks like at night.

Oh, yeah. Better come prepare to party.


Jenna drove down with me to check the place out on Wednesday, and we both loved it. 

Pause: Is my roommate not the cutest thing ever?

The view of the patio from the other side. It's right on the bay. Rad, right?

And here's me, approximately where Chris and I will be standing in 223 days. (That Jenna's adorable, but she can't focus a camera lens to save her life.)

Chris and I are very excited about this. We'd been talking with our guy over there, Steve, who'd let us in on the only available dates from here through November: July 23 (Friday, and really, really soon), October 31 (Sunday... and Halloween), and November 28 (Sunday, and sooooo far away). We were bummed about dates, but we were beginning to come around to Halloween... until the next day (Thursday) we called again and Steve told us November 13, a Saturday, had just become available.


Chris had Friday off (sort of), so we spent the day finishing up some work at his office (while I looked up wedding blogs on his co-worker's computer - sorry, Erin, for signing you out of Facebook!), going to Robbins Brothers twice (see the ring fiasco story coming soon), getting lunch, and finally getting to Coronado at 3:45 where we were supposed to meet Steve at 5:30.

We had some time to kill obviously, so we wandered around checking it all out. Eventually we went to talk to a couple guys manning the main desk, and turns out they could answer most of our questions about the room anyway, and took us on the deluxe tour. Then Steve showed up for his shift, and he turned out to be this guy who's our age, about to get married himself, and goes to Flood. We couldn't have asked for a nicer or more helpful guy.


So... we got our place! A little later in the year than we'd hoped, but at least that part's done. Now the rest of the planning can commence.


Here's Chris in our future wedding spot:

November 13, people!