Update Blog

I've been updating, folks. Adding in blogs with pictures from the last month as I've stumbled across them on my camera.

And I put them in date order. Even though I know some of you (cough, Justin and Jessica, cough!) hate that.

I won't add any that are from before April, so please forgive me and just scroll through, kplzthx?

Inappropriate Shoes

Alternate Title: Why marrying a designer is such hard work: Part two

I'm going to have yellow flats for my wedding shows. Here is my reasoning for this:
1) We're getting married on grass; heels have a propensity to sink in grass
2) I'm not planning on walking around on heels all day anyway... even when we're not standing on grass
3) Why would I spend hundreds of dollars on a pair of white satin strappy sandal things that I'll never wear again?
4) Nobody's going to see my feet anyway.
5) It's way more fun.


Chris agreed on all of the above terms, but mostly I think because on his search for wedding photographers, he's found fun pictures of the bright colored shoes hiding under girls' wedding dresses, and I'm sure he envisions this for our wedding picture portfolio.

So I went looking for yellow shoes at Payless on Saturday.

I found a pair of tiny heels instead. Yellow. Comfortable. Won't sink far into the grass. Twenty bucks. Perfect.

Sent the picture to Chris.

He hated them and proceeded to email me a list of approved yellow shoes. He said tiny heels are for four year olds. (?) His specifications are either real heels or no heel at all.

(This is me rolling my eyes.)

Here's his pre-approved list:

(Um, how are the heels I picked out any smaller than these ones?!)

(Okay, I like these ones.)

(And these ones. I think these might be the winners. Soooo comfy looking.)

(And these ones I found on my own!)

So I've got to make a trip back to Payless to return some four-year-old heels. Sadly, I'll have to pick out another pair of $20 shoes, since I used the heals to buy a BOGO pair of cute brown heels for work.

Sigh. Life is so hard marrying a designer.

But I suppose it's worth it. :)

OSF... revealed

I never got to the part of our proposal day where Chris threw me a huge surprise engagement party.


Basically, my wonderful, spectacular, challenge-accepting future husband decided that, not only was he going to make the proposal a complete and total surprise, but he was going to tell everyone important in our lives before he even did it, and still keep it a secret from me.


He is amazing. So's everyone else. I can't believe people knew for a month. My family. His family. Our roommates. Our best friends. Even my co-workers, who I am with every day, knew for a whole week before, and never said a word.


Really, it was freaking amazing that I was so completely in the dark.

This right here is a look of total and complete adoration. 

I give it to him a lot.

He really, really deserves it.

Us OSF's, with the guy who started it all- Ryan!

Chris and his amazing sister Sarah- who also played a hand in giving us a kick start. (You know what I mean if you saw the slideshow. If not, stay tuned for a link to the PDF of the slide show!)

Chris and his wonderful mother!

Sisters at the engagement party- I know, I know, you're all, "Who is that last person?" That's my older half sister, Jacqui. She's 9.5 years older than me, but we shared a room until I was 8. I always got stuck with the top bunk, which for some reason was in the middle of the room so that I almost got decapitated by the ceiling fan every night. (What were my parents thinking?)

Yeah, that's what comes to mind when I think of my older sister. Good times like the top bunk. :)

And you all know the lil' sis, Britt. She thinks she's all cool right now because she's just discovered that Jonathon Groff's cool. Oh, baby sis. I tried to get you to come to Spring Awakening with us many times last year. I suppose all it takes is one of them to land on Glee for her to get on board with the cool things in life. 

That was a big digression. Back to the party.

This, sadly, was probably how I looked all night. Shocked. Flitting from person to person with no real meaningful conversation. Telling the story fifteen times. ("And then Zach Quinto came down the stairs! And then Chris was sitting all weird! And then I had a ring on my hand, and now here I am with you!")

Okay, this is my favorite picture of the night. These five people here have a tradition, you see, we've got a picture from each wedding related event we've gone through. Sarah's. Mandy's. Sonia's. Hey, where's Sonia's? Sonia? I don't remember now.

But here's mine!

AND the best part is that right after I lamented how Mandy wasn't here for my turn at the roommate picture, Sarah whipped out a picture of Mandy (and David, but whatever) for the group pic. Totally thinking ahead that one- and now I have an awesome roommate engagement party picture!

Another favorite, and this one requires back story too.

Once upon a time there were four guys. Three of them were named Chris. And the other one was named Kris. The Chris' and Kris decided to all become best friends in fourth grade. 

As the years went by, they decided to start adding wives to their club. But poor Chris T. was stuck out in the cold for the longest time; he always made pictures asymmetrical with his lack of a female counterpart.

Then he met me and all was set right in the world of the Chris' (and Kris).

Isn't that a great story?

Here's one of my best friends, Sonia, of whom I apparently have no roommates-at-a-wedding pictures. Seriously, how did that oversight happen?

Okay, get ready for some cute. This is Jessica, Chris' cousin. You may remember her from Wii Boxing over the summer. She's pretty much the most adorable thing ever.

And she's going to be our most adorable ever flower girl!

Probably there won't be any Wii Boxing demonstrations, but maybe if you ask her nicely she'll show you her famous roundhouse run-in-place-and-punch-the-heck-out-of-the-air. 

My Woodman friends made it too! Michelle, Sandee, and Sandee's husband came down to celebrate with us, and even brought us wine and awesome picture frames... because Sandee knows I like me some pictures!

When all the hooplah was over, and our guests had left, we went down to the restaurant area of our party venue and had a late dinner with Chris' family. AND got to open up some neato presents from Chris' mom: our first wedding planner and the Groom Book. 

PS: That Groom Book is hilarious.

Oh, yeah! I lured you all in here with a promise to reveal the OSF acronym! It sure would've been mean of me to forget that, for those of you who weren't there for the big reveal at the party....

Yeah. Chris gave up the secret at our party. He had it in the slideshow he'd made for the night (which was AMAZING, but I can't figure out how to link it here!). Imagine my surprise when I'm telling the engagement story for the eleventh time, keeping an eye on the sliding slides that I hadn't seen yet, when he goes and REVEALS THE SECRET I PLANNED TO KEEP TO MY GRAVE. Or at least until our wedding. I was debating revealing it then. But Chris just went right ahead and told everyone.

But I know some of you weren't there. So for the sake of your sanity, I will go ahead and not only tell you what it means, but give you the exact context of its origins... this is a Fabulous Life exclusive, people: the never before read original beginnings of Chris and Jordan's friendship.

It all started on Facebook.

Chris Trementozzi January 16, 2009 at 1:17am

Hello Jordan! Ryan mentioned to me the other night that he showed you my little christmas gift, 365. Glad that you liked it. And no, obviously I haven't met you, but I know OF you. Ry has spoken about you on some of your little outings and what not, and I have seen you in his facebook pictures. We should all hang out sometime! I am always looking for good and awesome new friends! What do you do besides hug exotic animals in the wild?

Jordan Peck January 16, 2009 at 1:06pm

Hey, New Friend!

Awww, that Ryan’s a good guy. He talks about you, too, so I wonder why we haven’t ever all hung out in one big group? We’ll have to change that.

What do I do when I’m not hugging exotic animals?... Well, right now I’m trying to figure out why my work e-mail won’t accept incoming messages and deciding what would be a fun thing to upload to Blurb so I can get a sample of how good their books are. I’m also putting off going to the post office. :) When I’m not at work I’m either doing fun things with friends like Ryan or at home uploading pictures of the fun things we did.

I see you’re a fan of How I Met Your Mother, which means our friendship is officially solidified. :)

Chris Trementozzi January 16, 2009 at 2:17pm

Ryan is a very possessive and evil step-mother...he doesn't let me out of the house much...I usually have to much scrubbing, cleaning and laundry to do...but one day I'll get to go to the ball.

Ok, so I didn't know what Blurb was...it's amazing! At least it's pricing is. Being as I design books and various other things for work and play, I was impressed. I am interested in their quality also, let me know what you get. Maybe you could let me see what you get?

Where do you work?

Your a HIMYM fan too!?!?! Ryan got me hooked a long time ago after like the 3rd episode he watched or something...Idk exactly, my memory is fuzzy. But I LOVE it! Barney cracks me up.

Be in touch.

Offically solidified friend,

Chris

Jordan Peck January 16, 2009 at 4:09pm

OSF (Officially Solidified Friend),

Who doesn't like HIMYM? (Apart from those people who've never seen it and are living in ignorance.) Ryan never told me about HIMYM, but he claims after we all got hooked that he had mentioned it occasionally. My friend Justin kept bugging me to watch it, and then I housesat for him and he had seasons one and two, and I watched them both in one week. Then I stole them and made Brittany and our other roommate, Jenna, watch them, and now we are all obsessed. Marshall is one of my favorite fictional characters of all time. :)

Blurb is awesome, right? I've been working on making a blog book, but it's nowhere near done, and I wanted to see a test copy of one of their b&w books since we might be recommending them to a client of ours.

I work for a little consulting company called CTRG, but really I work for the owner, who just happens to be my friend Justin's dad. I've known their family a loooooooong time. Anyway, I do mostly admin work, but we also recently started a small publishing company on the side, because we were getting poor quality from the company who was designing our books. It's been way fun; I do the interior design and editing and Justin does the cover.

Which leads me to my questions about YOU designing books. What kind of books do you do? What kind of design do you do?

And that is my essay for this afternoon. Guess I'm off to the post office now. :)

OSF,

Jordan       

And that's the beginning of a beautiful friendship, if I do say so myself.

International Gathering of Bridezillas: San Diego Chapter

Also known as the Del Mar Bridal Bazaar.

Basically, we ate lots of cake and browsed flower displays while photographers, videographers, dj's, and wedding coordinators threw themselves at us.

(I throw myself at this guy every once in awhile. He likes it. Ssshhh. Don't tell anyone.)

The day was basically an excuse to take pictures of flower arrangements and steal ideas. 

By the end of the day, our complimentary Alfred Angelo bag was chalk full of wedding paraphernalia. Catalogs, fliers, photo booth prints...

Say what you will about the simplicity of carnations, I happen to find them marvelous. Especially when they're all bunched together like this. It's the symmetrical part of me feeling giddy.

Okay, I want to find these square, short vases in a pretty gray. It would make my wedding complete. Please tell me if you find them anywhere? Thanks.

It was literally exhausting. And I was hungry afterwards. So hungry, in face, I kind of felt like this guy:

He was hungry enough to eat the menus off the table at Miguel's. (Can you blame him, though, it's not like the waiter kept us supplied with chips or the yummy cheese dip all night?)

And, yes, that's Baby Holz. All grown up and distinguished now, isn't he? He was gracious enough to loan his parents to us to talk their ears off about wedding this and wedding that after the bridal show. Thanks, B. 

Mystery Project

The OSF went out and bought yellow paint. He pulled out a square canvas he's been saving since his college days in the art department.

What is that OSF up to, you ask?

You'll see... on September 20th.

Today I swam in white lace.

I met my mom and sister at David's Bridal for Round Two of the Search for The Dress (note the capitalized conjunction; we mean business here, people). Round One was a couple weeks ago with Sonia, Jenna, and Brittany. I wasn't allowed to post any pictures since a certain future husband reads the blog faithfully and refuses to see any and all wedding dress paraphernalia... at least the ones that I'm in. 


But as I went through the pictures from today's excursion, I found this little gem, taken by my baby sister, that is totally pre-husband approved. This is me in between dresses, which is why I'm merely peeking my head out of the dressing room. I believe this was between dress #5 and going back to dress #2. 


Dress #2 seems to be the crowd favorite around here. All the roommates loved it last time, and my mom and sister voted on it hands down today. I'm mostly thrilled that I can wear it in a size four. Let's keep it real, people.

Some happenings

Friday, April 2: Chris' first day off for Easter break, my fifth. We make a day of going down to Robbin's Brothers, not once, but twice, to deal with the ring fiasco, going to Chris' work, not once, but twice, for Chris to finish up some work from the day before, and for me to use Erin's computer to surf wedding blogs, and finishing off the day going to Coronado for Chris to see firsthand what the community center looks like. 

He liked it.

We booked it.

It was beautiful.

But he wouldn't stand still for a picture.

Saturday, April 3. Chris brought home from work the Pantone color swatches.

I hate these things. Really, really hate them.

Chris: Pick colors you like for the wedding!

Jordan: It's hard for me to pick off a piece of paper. I need to see the colors in texture and on fabrics.

Chris: But we need a base color to jump off of.

Jordan: Okay... grumble, grumble... but I'm just picking colors I like... I don't think they go together well for a wedding scenario. I'd still need to see them in real life....

Five minutes later....

Chris: You just picked all the lightest shades of blue! And Easter egg green and yellow!

Jordan: I told you this was a bad idea!

Chris: You are the worst color picker ever!

Jordan: I knew I should have made him sign my previously mentioned disclaimer. 

So if you leave knowing nothing else, know that the Pantone color swatches are evil and cause dissension in relationships.

Thursday, April 8. We get the contract for the site in the mail and with it comes... a layout of the room, complete with little punch outs of tables, chairs, and dance floors of all sizes. It was pretty sick, until we realized it all wasn't quite to scale, and neither Chris nor I can handle something like, but we had some fun with it anyway.

This is Chris' favorite layout: dance floors, all night, all over.