Magician

I should be a magician because I have a pretty awesome disappearing act. Okay that joke was totally lame awesome! But seriously, it's been a while. Why, you ask? I'll tell you why. Because I didn't feel like blogging about my hair being pulled out and the tears coming down my face. Oh, and the yelling. Wedding planning is not a pretty sight. At least for this girl. We were thrown a wrench (luckily early in the planning) but it made us switch up everything.

Here's what went down:

June in a Tennessee valley = HOT. If it's going to be anything like this summer, the pictures wouldn't be pretty because we'd all be drenched in sweat. I'm pretty sure the guests wouldn't even want to move because they'd be cooking like eggs and bacon (ew, bacon.) We came to the conclusion that we needed to have an indoor/outdoor reception venue. 

Here's your challenge: Try and find a place with a big enough indoor facility to seat everyone in one room (~130 guests) but with enough mingling/dancing space outside, in the Sewanee community that fits our budget. GO.

Any luck? Yeah, me either.

We found lots of different options that at first look seemed perfect. Then it came to either price ($3,000 for a barn rental? Really? And all you're going to do is hose it down? AND I have to rent toilets? AND there's no AC in the barn? Yeah... uh no.)

So, finally we decided it was time to look outside of the Sewanee community and we found a place where my parents live AND we got a super amazing deal. Can't complain about that, right? Plus the Catholic church is within walking distance! I think we hit the jackpot here.

So now that I have less hair and rehydrated myself from all the water loss from crying, we can start back up with the planning.

The next step? CAKE tasting! My favorite! :)

Surprise!

You guys may want to sit down for this. I mean really, it's something that is going to be a bit shocking to you. Sitting? Ok great. (Although, if you are on the computer while standing up, you are strange. Just saying...)

I finally made the phone calls that I had intended to make right after my parents were here. Yes. My parents were here in February. It is now the end of April. Regardless of how long it took me to get it done, it still got done, right!? Yay me!

But seriously... WHY ARE WEDDINGS SO EXPENSIVE?! People are just monopolizing on other peoples' happiness and excitement. Rude. In the words of Elle Woods from Legally Blonde, "I object!" [Yes I did just quote Legally Blonde and no you can not judge me because we all know you secretly love that movie as well. Just stop denying it.] The worst part is that since we are getting married in a small town, there aren't a lot of options for rentals. So unless I take some sheets out there like I was a kid making a fort, I'm going to have to pay the money. [The fort is looking more and more appealing.] Unless anyone wants to lend us one of these:

[from]

Or some of these:

[from]

Great, thanks :)

On a happier note, I received an e-mail saying that my dress has arrived! My friend Racheal and I are going to drive down to Houston on Sunday to go pick up my dress and veil. I am so excited to just put it on again! I ordered it a size larger than what I tried on at the store just in case of weight fluctuation [did I ever tell you I worry a lot?] You can always take something in but you can't take it out! The hardest part about it will be hiding it from Marshall. I have no doubt that Marshall will not peek but it's more me hiding it from him that will be the challenge.

Oh and by the way... 422 days until the wedding. Just in case you WEREN'T counting (I know, nonsense. Everyone is counting down the days.)

Field of Dreams

My mom is referring to our wedding as the "Field of Dreams." I have to say that I'm quite impressed with all of her creativity about this! With that being said, we have decided on the theme of our wedding. Drum roll please.... drrrrrrrrrrr (that's the keyboard drum roll sound in case you didn't know) Baseball! (Marshall love his Red Sox and our cat is even named after it.) Now, I'm not going to give anything away simply because you don't want everyone knowing exactly what's going on at the wedding before it happens! There's got to be some sort of surprise! But, after talking with my parents and Marshall last night, I couldn't sleep because I was so excited.

Fenway Park 

Fenway the cat.

I feel as if we got a lot accomplished this weekend while my parents and best friend (maid of honor) were here. Although nothing is set in stone, we have everything laid out so now it's not as much as a cluster as it was before. We now just need to go through and get all the details ironed out.

The best part of the weekend (apart from my best friend flying out to Texas from Oregon and my parents coming in)? We bought my wedding dress!!! Of course I'm not going to add pictures of the dress as I'm sure I have forbidden eyes as a reader of this blog. Therefore the only thing I can say is that it's beautiful and is definitely a "Shannon" dress... whatever that means. I hope you are picturing a dress with a high slit and a very busty top because that's definitely the dress!

Marshall and I have also decided on our invitations (well, the idea for the invitations) and have an idea for our save the dates. We will meet with our photographer next weekend and discuss what pictures we want and hopefully get that scheduled!

Unfortunately, without spilling all the beans, I feel like this is all I can share at the moment.  I've got to make a few phone calls in regards to pricing of certain things so I'm sure that's when the gray hairs will start poppin' up again. Yuck.

But we shouldn't worry about that. I'm just excited to have a grand slam of a wedding.

Yeah. I know you like that play on words.

Happy New Year!

Well, Christmas has come and gone so now the wedding plans can be put into motion!

Marshall and I went to Tennessee for Christmas. We went to the Christmas Eve service at one of the prospective Catholic churches to have the wedding. As soon as we pulled up, I fell in love with it. It had a stone exterior. It was a smaller church, but could hold plenty of people. It was just stunning. We would have to ask another priest to do the wedding though. The one there is French... hard to understand. Luckily, Marshall's family knows some :)

Christmas Day we went out to the field next to Marshall's house and just looked at the land. Perfect for the wedding reception. There's view of mountains from practically any place you stand, there's electricity back there, plenty of land for parking and it's flat. Things are definitely coming together!

{Marshall and I checking out the field}

Mom and Dad are coming to Nacogdoches in late January, early February for wedding stuff (I think I've already mentioned this.) I am so excited for them to come visit and we can start getting down to business!

Just wanted to update you all about what's going on. Nothing too stressful since not much has really happened. Hopefully there's some more stress with the next post because stress makes me a funny Shannon (or so I like to think)

Oh... I'm learning how to knit (yes I've aged tremendously) Maybe I can knit some bridal accessories? Or bows for the kitties?? Marshall would kill me.

Hold for the holidays

So, I really stink at updating this blog. Maybe blogging is not my forte. Or maybe it's because wedding planning has been put on hold for the holidays. I'm going to go with the second one so that way I sound better. I'm so involved in Christmas that I can't plan my wedding... yes that's it. Or, my parents are so involved in Christmas that I can't talk to them about wedding planning. Eh, same difference.

I recently went with some friends from work to try on some wedding dresses. One of the other ladies recently got engaged and ended up buying her wedding dress. It is absolutely gorgeous and she is going to look stunning walking down that aisle next December. I honestly don't think she could have picked a better dress and I'm not saying that out of fear of her reading this. It was gorgeous! (Hi Jennifer!) My family wasn't there, so I knew going in there that I wasn't ready to buy a dress but more to find out what styles I liked. 

My entire life (well, ever since I walked down our living room hallway in my sisters communion dress to get married to my English Springer Spaniel, Mikey, who was wearing a black long sleeve shirt of my dads) I've pictured myself in the A-Line dress or a ball gown. I still like those styles but I want a wedding that will involve a lot of dancing. There's only so much space for that and I don't want my dress to be taking up most of it! Yes, these are the issues that I am dealing with at the moment. Preventatives of dancing. Dress, shoes, space, encouragement for guests to dance [alcohol] and choreographed routines. Okay, maybe not that last one.

But I digress, I tried on the A-Line gowns. They were okay. Nothing took my breath away. Tried on a mermaid style gown. Everyone else liked it... but I didn't. And that's what's most important, right? Plus, if I'm going to go as a princess, it sure as hell isn't going to be Ariel. I like my legs. I tried on the fit and flare and fell in love. I felt skinny and I felt like it was a ball gown. Best of both worlds! But despite the fact that they were having a 40% off sale, I knew I wasn't going to get it. I can't image not having my parents see me in the dress before I buy it. And that was only one place... it's me. I need to check out all my options before I commit. That's what I did with Marshall. ;) just kidding. 

So, along with the rest of the wedding planning, the dress shopping as been put on hold until the madre and the padre come to visit (late January, early February). 

The best and newest development? We found our photographer! Didn't take much looking considering it's our friend, Donna, from softball. We were really lucky to have met her and get such an amazing photographer for our wedding. We're just hoping she likes Tennessee!

By the way, the gray hairs are gone. Hooray for hair dye! Any bets on when the next one pops up? I'm thinking two weeks after the wedding planning goes back into full swing.

Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

Going to the Chapel...

And we're gonna get married!

I've been engaged for almost three weeks now and the wedding planning has begun... sort of. Three weeks into it and I'm pretty sure I've already spotted two more gray hairs. Let's just add "getting hair dyed" to the list of things to do before the wedding. Thank goodness I have a year and a half until the wedding!

My fiance, Marshall, proposed to me on Thanksgiving. He works for the local newspaper as the ad director and got a full page ad of him standing with a sign asking "Will you marry me?" Behind him were pictures of the two of us from our two years together. I was a little shocked at 2 a.m. when I saw it (yes, that's two in the MORNING. Someone claimed to be a little too excited about Black Friday ads to sleep...) After asking if this was real and realizing I wasn't dreaming, I put the ring on and called my best friend. Cutest proposal ever? Yeah, I'd say so... in a totally not biased opinion of course!

After pulling my eyes away from my beautiful ring (this was not an easy task and took about two days) we began researching wedding venues. I'm from Virginia, currently live in Texas and am planning our wedding in Tennessee. Talk about a bit of a struggle. I called around to a few places that I thought looked nice just to get an idea of prices. I was greeted with happy voices eager to take my money saying numbers that either exceeded my budget completely, came pretty close or I couldn't even dream of ever having. "$15,000 for a venue? Hahaha really, what is it? Seriously? Does that include my dress, the bridesmaid dresses and all decorations? No? Oh. Okay. Thanks for crushing my dreams."

This is when the gray hairs began to grown. I'm pretty sure if I stood in front of the mirror after each phone call you'd see another one pop up like a weasel in the ground. BOOP!

So I decided to save my brown hair and do the next best thing -- put on some PJ's, grab a beer and start Pinteresting things to my wedding board! Speaking of which... I've got some pins to examine.

Until the next dilemma,

Shannon