Wedding Planning Update

In between house hunting and working, I've tried to do a little bit of wedding planning, but the hardest decisions have still yet to be made:

Wedding Site - I'm having a hard time figuring out where to have the wedding, mostly because there are SO many beautiful choices around here. I keep getting all of the sites confused with each other and most of the searching has been don online and via email with my mom. My Mom and I both looked at Cambria Pines Lodge - she said the food and service was great, and we both thought the grounds were very nice. The catch is if you want an evening reception, you have to have it inside their conference hall. NT! Mainly I want an outdoor evening wedding with lots of greenery. I also don't want it to be too fancy. Here are some of my top choices so far:

• Jack House Gardens - downtown SLO


• Villa de Buena Vista - Paso Robles wine country


• Dallidet Adobe Gardens - downtown SLO

Size of wedding - I am thinking I want the wedding to be about 100 people. I need an approximate guest list from Steve's mom, my mom, and Steve still so I can get an estimated guest count which will help better determine the catering budget.

Wedding Party - the wedding party depends on three things: where the wedding will be, how many guests are invited, and how many groomsmen Steve wants on his side. He won't tell me who he wants on his side of the wedding party until I pick a place and so far his numbers have ranged from 2-4. I don't think the numbers have to match exactly, but I don't want a huge mismatch. I also don't want a ton of people in the wedding party since the wedding style is going to be relatively simple. But also, I am not having a flower girl nor a ring bearer, so that will cut down on number of people a little bit. I've already asked Helya to be my Maid of Honor and Heather to be a bridesmaid. I probably shouldn't even be talking about this yet but I just wanted to fill everyone in so you all know that I'm giving this all a lot of thought but I haven't come to any other conclusions yet! Sorry!

Dress - I'm ordering a few dresses from J. Crew to try. They are simple, small, elegant, and INEXPENSIVE! Hopefully I'll be trying them out in Long Beach in two weeks! EXCITED! Go look at JCrew.com and see what I mean.

Flowers/accents - I'm thinking lots of greens and whites with a little bit of color here and there. Here are some ideas:

• Ferns
• Green Viburnums
• White Peonies
• Queen Anne's Lace
• White Scabiosa
• Lilacs
• Lily of the Valley
• Gladiolus
• Daffodils
• White ruffled hydrangea
• calla lillies
• hypericum berries
• white hyacinths
• green/pink hydrangea
• ranunculas
• green apples
• green limes
• succulents

Bouquets I like:

Okay so there you have it - all of my ideas thus far! Let me know what you think! Oh yeah, wedding date will be set once we pick a wedding site - but hopefully May 2010!

Change of Plans

We decided to cancel our offer on the house. There were too many issues with it. One being an easement through the backyard meaning we would own the propertly but the City could regulate the use of the yard and we'd have restrictions for how we could landscape it. LAME! The other issue was a dining room that was not permitted when it was built, or if it was, the builders weren't making it very easy to get official documentation. WEIRD! After thinking about the house a little bit more, we came to the conclusion that we absolutely cannot live with the amount of storage space it had. There was a small one car garage, a tiny amount of storage space under the stairs, and closets in the bedrooms. But, where are we supposed to hang our coats? What about the vacuum? And linens?! More importantly, where do I store all the food?!?! There's no pantry and not much cupboard space in the kitchen. Yeah, there's room for growth and remodeling, but at the price we were going to pay, it would be years before we could save up for some big changes like that.

Anyway, I guess I'm just trying to convince myself that we made the right decision. The house was beautiful, brand new, next to the creek, and just a short walk from The Village. But we have to look at things practically and think about how truly comfortable we'd be in the house.

We found another prospect also in Arroyo Grande near the Village. It's a bigger house for less money, but it's also older and needs some updating. But it's sooo gorgeous!! We looked at a few houses yesterday after work but they were all in cookie-cutter neighborhoods and the houses looked like legos. No Thanks.

This house-hunting stuff is stressful, but also really really fun!!

And the Celebration Begins

In celebration of getting my ring and having our offer accepted on the house we headed downtown on our cruisers for a few drinks. It was an unusually interesting night where we met a wide variety of strange and friendly people. Usually when we go to McCarthys, we sit in the back and talk to one another, but Saturday night we were perched in the middle of the bar chatting it up with new people every hour. Here are the highlights:

• Free shot of Jamison Whiskey from the bartender as a congrats for our engagement
• Made a friend with a guy who said he proposed to his longtime girlfriend and she rejected him. Later, he found out she said no because she was cheating on him. Free Tecate from lonely boy.
• Friend of lonely boy (let's call him Snoz because he has a big nose) came in to find him and we all started talking. He finds out we're engaged and for the next three hours he wants to be our best friend and keeps saying over and over how great we are together and gives a lot of "awws" like a girl might. Flattering but his excitement was a bit strange.
• I came back from the bathroom and Steve was talking to what we later dubbed as "Dr Evil Mini Me". He seemed friendly enough at first, but then he just kept bragging about his PhD and how he is a medical doctor at some local clinic and how rewarding it is (BORING). So, to act interested, Steve starts talking about his time working in a medical lab in the Army. Instead of responding like normal polite people do, Dr. Evil just stared at me pervertedly while muttering dumb things about his job in a weird voice through big gross chapped lips.
• Then there were the Englishmen. By this time, I had a few too many Bud Lights, but as I recall, they were traveling around the United States and somehow found themselves in San Luis Obispo while driving down the 101 from San Francisco. They were round and jolly with lots of smiles for everyone. I've never seen two guys quite as cheerful as they were.
• We had been out since about 3 in the afternoon, so by 10, we were ready to call it a night. But, not before heading to Sandy's Liquor to say hi to our good friend, Sal. Here's what we did at Sal's Liquor store.

• Before leaving Sal's we ended up in conversation with a couple in their 40's celebrating the wife's birthday. They were visiting from Seattle, here on a "vacation" for her birthday since her husband had lived in SLO for 10 years prior. However, as I got deeper into the conversation with the woman, I found out they were on the run because her husband had a few too many DUI's and they had a warrant out for his arrest. But, to their misfortune, they were driving through town the day before, got pulled over and the husband was sent to jail overnight. He bailed himself out in the morning and now here they were, happy as could be, all dressed up for a night on the town, looking for somewhere to go dancing. I also found out that they were "realllllly into marijuana" and luckily smoked all of it on their road trip down to SLO before getting pulled over by the cops in town because the cops searched the entire car. CLASSY!

More pictures of the new house:

Kitchen

Backyard

Diamonds are a girl's best friend

After two weeks, I finally got my ring back from the jeweler! It's a round cut diamond on a platinum band, and I am so in love with it I cannot take my eyes off it! This is the exact ring I've always wanted and I feel so lucky that I got to customize it. We were able to save four little diamonds from the original ring, and we're planning on making Steve's mom a pair of earrings out of it as a thank you for this beautiful diamond!! See for yourself...

(click on photo to see larger image)

Butterflies

Yesterday, Steve and I were having coffee on our patio enjoying the warm sunshine, and he scooted up real close to me. He said something like, "I was trying to think of the perfect place, somewhere special...but I thought there was no place more special than right here" and I had no idea what he was talking about, until his eyes welled up and his voice began to crack and he looked at me with the sweetest look and asked me to marry him!!! Then he took out a little box with a gorgeous ring. My response was, "OF COURSE I WILL!" and I got really hot and sweaty and smiled so big it hurt. We hugged and smooched and I had so many butterflies. It all happened very quickly but it was absolutely perfect.  The ring was actually an old diamond ring of his mom's, which she gave to him as a place holder for the real ring. But we took it to the jeweler to see if they could change it a little bit to make it my own. They are going to make it into a solitaire diamond atop a thin platinum band. Simple and sweet. EXACTLY what I wanted.  I'll post a picture once I get it back.

So yeah, I'm on cloud nine. It still hasn't quite hit me that I am engaged, but I'm sure it will once we start talking about wedding details. I am the luckiest girl alive, and I am so thankful to have found such a loving man who is my equal, my strength, my common sense, and my joy! Whoo hoo let's celebrate!!