I think I want THAT one...

Oh the joys of weddingness. (Is that a word?)

Last weekend Brad and I decided that we wanted to do something fun and found ourselves at Target with a scanner gun, registering for gifts. Three hours later, we walked out of Target completely exhausted and nearly registered half the store for our gift registry! We walked up and down every single aisle (including the toy aisle) and looked at most of the stuff and asked, "Do you like it?", "Do we need it?", "Is this too much?", "How durable is this?", "Will this match the stuff that we already have?", and blah blah blah. I think we sat and stared at the place mats for our dining room table for about 10 minutes trying to decide what we liked...it was a bit ridiculous. Although, I feel like we registered for a good mix of practical gifts and "luxury" items. (I'm really hoping we get the Wii) (wink wink to all those reading this...no seriously.)

But the best part of the day was watching Brad and his scanner. Make no mistake, it was his scanner. I had absolutely nothing to do with it. And if he did by chance hand the thing off to me, I was only allowed to have it for approximately 10 minutes or 10 scans, whichever came first. I've never seen him so affectionate with a "toy". (Except his Legos.) (Sorry I outed you babe) If I had a nickel for every time I heard the phrase "FREEZE PUNK!", I would have about a dollar. He was hilarious with it. Scanning objects as if they had broken the law. He was telling me to "FREEZE!" at every corner and almost every object he scanned. It was as if his inner policeman had taken over, and everything was about to be shot. Like the spatulas, pans, rugs, and towels had all broken the law and they were about to be annihilated by Rambo. He was also trying to get me to give him an incentive to barrel roll out into the middle of the aisle and shout "FREEZE!". I gave him no such incentive. There were people watching us, and there were plenty of other couples there registering as well, and they were not acting as dorky as Brad was. I got embarrassed. Sorry Brad. Maybe when we go to Bed, Bath & Beyond, you can barrel roll into the aisle with your scanner gun and shout, "FREEZE!".

I know he will dispute the validity of this story, but you can trust my slightly embellished version ;)

I am so, uh, fashionable?

For a long while, my wedding dreaming had subsided. The last wedding dream I had turned out to be my wedding nightmare, and I blogged about it. I was content with that being my last wedding dream. I now fully believe that this wedding is going to happen. It's not a dream anymore, it's a reality :) I love the reality of it. But last night a pesky little wedding dream crept into my subconscious. I had a dream about the wedding budget. Numbers were flying everywhere and I had one of those old fashioned calculators that prints the receipt as you type in the calculations. The receipt tape was out of control and my hair was an absolute mess and I was completely stressed trying to crunch the numbers so the wedding would come in on budget. I think this could be a major theme to this blog...weddings are expensive! I mean, seriously expensive. So guess what I am going to be doing today, yep, crunching numbers. Although, I will be doing it on my fancy schmancy scientific graphing calculator. Try not be jealous of my day ;)

I have more updates....Brad and I went shopping last weekend. We went to that mecca of any cheap shopper, and went to Dress Barn, Ross, and Kohls. I found nothing. Nada. Ni. Not a thing. It was so frustrating. I absolutely hate shopping now. I have lots of, uh, curves. My curves do not match the current trends of stick straight, tight, and skinny jeans. I am not complaining about my curves. I love my curves, and so does Brad. But it is because of my curves that it is really difficult for me to shop. After a couple of hours of seriously frustrating shopping, Brad suggested we go to "my place". The one place on the planet that I find all of my fashion needs and more...Target. That's right, I said it, I am a proud Target shopper. Half of my wardrobe is from there, and I cannot believe I didn't think to go there first. It would have saved me a lot of aggravation. I found a cute little wine colored dress and a purple tank top with a grey cardigan to go over the top. Very cute, if I do say so myself. Brad also found a new dress shirt to wear in the pictures and he looks HOT in it. Just take my word for it.

My next blog post will be all about taking engagements with Brad's sister Alisha...things are coming along! YAY!

This week has been a fun wedding planning week! The most fun has been designing our wedding invitations. We went to a place called Beautiful Wedding Announcements. It's a family owned business with the best printing prices in town. I just wanted to go and see what they had to offer, but we ended up designing the whole thing! The process of designing a wedding invitation is a little messy though. The owner of the company just gave us stacks of invitations they have done, all with different features, shapes, colors, fonts, etc. She told us to just pick them apart and decide what we like. Immediately me and Brad hated everything that had a collage of pictures. We just wanted one nice picture of us. And I also hate things that are on an angle. I am a perpendicular kind of gal. Most of the pictures that were a collage on the invitations were all angled and made to look like they were just "thrown" onto the invitation. Not my style. We also hated anything with bright colors or anything that might suggest that we are twelve years old and getting married. For the record, although we may act like we are twelve most days, we are not. We like things that are classy and simple. We are not extravagant people and we don't need our invitation to be either. And finally, I did not want to spend a TON of money on these announcements. Most of them are going to end up in the recycling bin anyway, so why put a ton of money into it? (And for the majority of you that read this blog, you will be getting an invitation, so please recycle them. It would mean a lot to me if you did!)

So as me and Brad are sifting through the endless piles of announcements, we start to formulate the things that we want for our announcement. I want it to be in our color scheme, pale yellow and eggplant, one picture, centered with an eggplant border around it, our names in eggplant and a special font, and to have a "slight floral" design in the background. (I asked Brad how he would describe the design in the background of our announcement and he said "slight floral". Really. His words, not mine.) We also decided to put the invitations on matte paper and not the glossy stuff. We really liked the linen paper, but it would cost extra. No thank you. We also wanted to get some thank you post cards to send to people. They're going to be adorable. A picture of me and Brad in our wedding day outfits holding "Thank You" posters. When you see them, you'll love them too :) I left the invitation designing center (ok, it was really in the garage/basement of some one's house. But it was legit.) feeling like we had accomplished something for the wedding. I love it when that happens. A lot of wedding planning is just talk, you talk about what you're going to do, when you're going to do it, and blah blah blah. There is not a lot of actual "doing" until about a week before when everything has to come together in perfect synchrony. The point is, I like getting things done. So, would you like to see the announcement?...

I can't figure out how to upload it, so you'll just have to wait until you get one in the mail. Haha! Well, we're taking some engagements next week, so wish me luck trying to find an outfit that is flattering and fashionable, all at the same time!

Busy Bees

Oh my goodness, I am so sorry for my lack of recent posting. What can I say graduation and a generous shove back to reality is brutal. This is how our lives goes, go to work (early) and he gets home in the afternoon, (and I am usually there all day) we come home to our adorable and horribly undertaken care of apartment and put in a good 3-5 hours of hard labor, then we start running errands for the wedding or make plans to run errands for the wedding, come home and eat dinner and then pass out by nine o'clock. And then we do it all over again! Doesn't that sound like fun? I thought you would agree.

So yesterday when we were putting in our 3-5 hours of hard labor into our house (ripped up the backyard. It is desolate. Come over and see it if you want. I'm so sore this morning. I cannot even describe), my nice/a little off her rocker neighbor came over to see what kind of progress we were making. She was quite impressed with our demolition skills and thought we were doing a great job. She then looked at me and said, "Don't you know that you're not supposed to make him work this hard until AFTER you're married?" She thought it was hilarious and gave herself a good chuckle while I indulged her with a slight laugh. But seriously? Am I supposed to wait to work "this hard" with my fiance until after we're married? That makes absolutely no sense! I would think it's a great idea to do hard manual labor together before you get married to see how you work together. But that's just me. Maybe that's why she's divorced, she and her ex-husband did not do manual labor together before they got married. Oh snap!

On the wedding planning front and progress...Brad and I went on an excursion to Michael's last night. As you all know, my beautiful friend Lorraine is also planning her wedding. She was kind enough to send me a link to a website with great wedding ideas. I searched the website and I found a really cute DIY project to wrap our favors in. Here it is. If you look at the page, we'll be doing the second and fourth pictures. I think they are really cute and instead of a leaf on the fourth picture, we're making tags that say, "From the kitchen of Mr. & Mrs. Harris". I am VERY excited for this project! And I hope all of my girlfriends are as well, because I am going to need all hands on deck for this one.

We're off to invitation land this afternoon to see what our options are and how much it is going to cost us...ha!

Making a list, checkin it twice

School is now officially out for both me and Brad, which means wedding planning is now in full swing. To be honest, I really have no clue what I need to do and what needs to get done. It's one of those things that is so overwhelming that you have no idea where to go, so I enlisted the help of theknot.com. The Knot has put together a list of all of the things that you should be doing to be planning the wedding of your dreams. This list is HUGE! I mean, pages and pages of "to-dos". I went through the list, and actually checked off quite a bit of it! YAY! So, I must be farther along than I had thought.

Our next thing on the to-do list is to take some engagements. We need to figure out a time that works for both of us and have Brad's sister Alisha come down. Alisha, call Brad and we'll work it out :) (gotta love my blog...the message board!)

But what's in the immediate future you ask? GRADUATION! That's right, I commence tomorrow night! My dad, grandparents, in-laws, niece, nephew, and fiance will all be there to watch me walk across the stage in all of my commencement glory. YIPEE!!!