More Wedding Porn

Ahh the wedding. After a proposal on Valentine's Day and months of preparation, the actual wedding zipped by very quickly. My advice, get everything locked and loaded in advance so you can sit back and take it all in on the day of. I had a super fabulous time and I hope I didn't forget to say "Hi" and "Thanks" to anyone there.

And man the pictures!! I was starving after the ceremony but couldn't get away due to pictures. But now I have lots and lots of pictures to look over to remind me af that fabulous day!

And the food! What a spread. Everyone brought such wonderful food! I'm only sorry I couldn't sample it all. Of course now we have tons of cupcakes left over. I think I'll take some to Chris (my wedding planner) since he was the one who recommended we have a large supply of cupcakes. I'm sure he won't mind.

Invitations!

Invitations are in the mail! Hooray! Flowers are ordered! Rentals are booked!

Month 2

Well we are getting settled into the routine. We worked our keisters off to get the shop presentable by our first Yappy Hour at the end of July. Unforunately we didn't have too many attendees, if fact we had only 2. I open the shop door for drop off and pick up to get it noticed and we have gotten a great response. The shop just wasn't getting any notice inside the house. We have sold some merchandise and I have 2 orders for paintings already.
There's still a bit of work to do with getting the grooming area finished, but it's coming along nicely. I've bought a bit of new merchandise and am planning a larger order probably next month. August and September are the lean months due to back to school. I want to have a huge Howloween Party in October so I'll be sure to have the new stuff by then. It's been pretty fun shopping around online for dog products. I want to find eco-friendly, recycled, and/or local products to sell. I also want to do some more handmade stuff. A friend's mom is working of felted dogs and dog blankies. She said she'd also do some sweaters for winter.
Now that the house is mostly empty, I'm anxious to get some stuff moved in. Definitely living room furniture since right now we have a tiny tv on a discarded table with a folding chair. The master bedroom needs the most work since that was where the groomer was. We are going to need to redo the floors in there and get rid of the remaining stuff.
On another note, I'm starting to freak out about the wedding since I only have 2 months left. I'm waiting for the invites so we can get those out and tomorrow I'm going to put in the rental order for the reception tableware. Then I need to figure out how many centerpieces I need so I can put in a flower order.
So I'm keeping plenty busy :)

wedding planning 101

i feel that i am pretty experienced in the party planning department, especially themed parties. and what's a wedding if not a huge theme party? since i don't plan on doing this again, here's my lessons learned so far in the fine art of planning a wedding.

1. Secure a venue/Pick a date. i have learned that these are the first things you should do when planning any event and tend to go hand in hand. i was floating around in a newly engaged haze and propably would have remained there if it hadn't been for my event planning friend. his second remark after "Shut up!" was "You need to get a venue." turns out he was right. this was February 15 and my original date of October 4 was already taken.

i could have kept the date and gone sonewhere else, but it wasn't the date so much for me as the venue.

http://www.botanicgardens.org/

my original date was going to be when we met, August 2o or our first date August 27, but those fell in the middle of the week and the middle of the Democratic National Convention. make sure there are no huge community events going on that will make travel and accomodations difficult for guests.

after much checking of schedules, we settled on October 3. yeah it's a Friday, but the groom figured that gives folks 2 days of party recovery. he's so thoughful.

so back to the venue, this required a lot of hemming and hawing on my part. the garden offered many sites individually or a wedding package. i was emailing back and forth with the venue coordinator then running down to my 'wedding planner' then back to the groom in my attempts to stay off of Mt. Spendy. it took about a week of this before i finally settled on the wedding package including the polly steel house from 5-11p. the final decision was to have 2 hours for set up and have the farmhouse for the entire time as dressing room/storage/additional bad weather seating.

so now that this part is locked and loaded, it was on to the theme.

wedding vote #2

i first saw button 'wedding cake' rings on eames & lola and thought they were the cutest things ever. so here's the vote, i was thinking of making some of these as wedding favors.

whaddya think?

and the winner is...

we (i) decided to go with the farm. it just offers a lot more fun stuff. i also feel that it is much more personal to both of us with our family farm histories. and tell me that a country farm/hoedown wedding isn't gonna be a hoot! think carmel apples, corn maze, autumnal, hot dish and bars kind of event. so keep friday october 3 open!

wedding update

so here's option 2www.douglas.co.us/eventscenter/Louviers_Village_Clubhouse.html

this space is only $300 but only holds 100. you do get 2 smaller rooms along with the school cafeternasuim space (nice stage), bathrooms and a kitchen. there's a bit of lawn too. it shares space with a library so the public uses the same front door to get to the library upstairs, but only from 8-noon. kinda cute bit since i work at a library and my former library boss hooked us up. it has much more availability than the farm so we could go back to a saturday wedding. another plus, since it's cheaper, we can splurge in other areas. downside, fewer people can fit. it's not as close to the house as the barn, but still within an easy distance.
i think the country farm theme would work here as well just not as hoedown-y as with the barn. maybe this could be more of a eastern seaboard theme only neither of us have been to the eastern seaboard. don't worry, i have no shortages of theme ideas.

wedding update

well, there's not much to update. i'm still trying to nail down a venue which will also determine the date. i feel like no progress has been made and that i can't move forward on anything else until i get this step done. i'm such a theme party person that i want to wait for the venue to decide on the theme. pretty nerdy , i know.

so option 1: the green farm barn at denver botanic gardens at chatfield.

super cute right? this site has limited availability in the fall due to other events so we'd be looking at a friday evening wedding. it has a bathroom and a sink inside and not much else, but you do get the outdoor patio plus the lawn areas. they also provide a wedding package for $1300 that gives you this as well.

the polly steel nature center which is a cute little farmhouse that they suggest for your getting ready giggly girls area. full kitchen for warming up things, keep coats and bags in here, another bathroom.

this is the first place i thought of since it's close to the house, and we worked out a down home, country farm theme. potluck reception, picnic blankets on the lawn, fiddlers, drinking tea out of mason jars. bonus is that the corn maze is going on to offer some fun and games for attendees. so a bit pricey but a lot of fun. i like this idea because the fiancee and i come from country farm backgrounds and it's a bit of a homage to our roots. i also love the casual, relaxed aspect of it. the fiancee doesn't mind the cost so much as he knows i am trying to be very budget conscious, but i still cringe at the price tag, espicially when i start adding up all the other things that go into the wedding. my wedding coordinator/gay husband tells me that even with our pie in the sky plans, we are still having a wedding well under normal costs.

so, that's option 1. more to come and as always, comments are appreciated.

we're gettin hitched!

it was a lovely valentine's day here in colorado. i thought i was getting flowers, but when i came home there were four rings lined up on the kitchen counter where i always put my bag down. they were his grandmother's and the sneaky pooh had gotten them some time ago. although i think they were given to him, more than asked for. tee hee!