The other man in my life... Kevin!

I was just catching up on some blog reading when Kevin decided to come over to the couch and cuddle. ("Awwwwww" moment!)

I love him! And can I just say that I also love the lazy mornings during winter and summer break when I don't have to work!!?!!  Flash back to late July when we got the little bugger and I was trying to enjoy my morning blog reading...

Oh my, that is cute. He likes reading the blogs just as much as I do, I guess! And some things never change...

This was shortly after Kevin decided he was finished cuddling this morning... I'm pretty sure he still thinks he's a baby...

Bridesmaids' dresses and a theory about Bridezillas...

I know I won't be able to say it enough, but my four bridesmaids are the most beautiful women I know! Inside and out. (Corny, I know, but it's true!) They are also four very distinctly different sizes. My original plan was to pick a color and a fabric, and let the girls pick out their own style dress. I almost had Momzilla (just kidding mom!) convinced until one of the dress shop ladies told us that it would be too distracting because everyone should be looking at me, not at all the girls' different dresses.

This reminded me of when a not-so-favorite coworker of mine tried to encourage me not to have my friend Brigitte's adorable daughter be my flower girl because she'll be cuter than me. LOL. No one will be cuter than me on my wedding day!

Um, just kidding. Again. Brigitte's daughter Brooklyn is the CUTEST little girl I have ever seen (since I was her age, naturally.) But seriously, let's side track for a minute and discuss the phenomena of Bridezillas...

 (Photo Credit: Wedding Bee)

While I used to think these girls were just plain nuts, I'm actually starting to empathize with them. No, no, I'm not becoming one (yet), but I'm starting to feel the stress. And it's funny because although I'll admit that the stress partially comes from within, it's definitely magnified by others. There are a lot of instances when you need help from people. Like, you can't get things done unless you have the help of others. It's stressful having to wait on others when you want need to get things done. On the flip side, it's also stressful when you have people giving you unsolicited advice and tips. It's awkward when you don't like their ideas. And there are sometimes when you just want a break from wedding planning and certain coworkers can't take a hint. Always standing over your shoulders asking what you're looking at now and if you've done this or that yet. Ugghh. I'm thinking nurture wins the battle in this case. I think Bridezillas aren't born, they're bred. Just a thought though. I digress.

Back to dresses! (The fun stuff!) So, my girls range greatly in size (btw, Brigitte's pregnant with adorable baby #2 and will have just given birth 3 weeks prior to W-day), and my mom wants me to find one dress that will look fabulous on all of them. I fall somewhere in between all of these sizes, and I know how hard it is for me to find clothes to fit me, so this task seemed a bit daunting. But I'm always up for a challenge. So I thanked my mother and began my search.

A couple of bridal boutiques later, we ended up at David's Bridal. I was avoiding this place because I had heard some, um, constructive criticism about them. But low and behold, we found a great dress there!

(Photo Credit: David's Bridal)

It has a perfect cut to look good on all shapes and sizes- even post-pregnant tummies! The color in the picture is called Latte, and it's the perfect neutral shade. It's brown without being fugly. I'm going to add a band to it, instead of that belt. I'm still debating whether or not to go with black or champagne on that... the boys will be in black, so maybe that... oy.

But anyway, one more thing to check off the to-do list, and that always feels good! Almost as good as eating the chocolate that I'm craving right now! ;-)

Wedding Updates

Wedding Updates
Okay, time to catch up on the major checklist of wedding related items... not that anyone reading this would care, but it will kind of help keep me sane. (I hope!) So here we go...

-Venue (Walnut Grove)
-Date (June 2011)
-Coordintaor
-DJ
-Photographer
-Officiant
-Wedding party

So far, it's all seemed to flow together. This is how it all went down...

VENUE:
I already discussed this, but once we found this particular venue and fell in love with it, they only had one Saturday up for grabs. So we grabbed it! That took care of the place and date!

COORDINATOR:
Michele is the site coordinator at Walnut Grove, but all she does is coordinate the site... unlessssss you want to hire her as a day-of coordinator. Everything I've read emphasizes how much more relaxing it is for the bride and the groom to have that extra help on their wedding day. And with all the planning and craziness I have going on now, I would really like to enjoy need to be able to enjoy our special day. I know that sounded like a bridezilla moment, but I think I might be entitled to those from time to time! ;-)

DJ:
Michele was helpful right from the start, and she gave us a list of preferred vendors. Lisa from I'm a Girl DJ caught my eye because of her business's name. (I'm a sucker for girl power, I guess!) Brian and I met with her at a Starbucks after work one evening, and we were sold! She was just like Michele, so friendly and welcoming. I've felt like I've known these ladies for years, Brian was super comfortable with both of them, and they just seemed like a perfect fit to have at our wedding!

PHOTOGRAPHER:
This has been a little trickier. We had some engagement pictures taken back in October. I had asked a friend of a friend (who is super-into weddings) if she knew of any good photographers who worked with people on a budget. She me the name of the sweetest little girl named Mia. We met and posed with her and she was another fantastic person to work with! The only problem was that she has never actually done a full on wedding before. And that scares me a little bit. I was saying from the beginning that the photographer was the one thing I was going to splurge on. We're still waiting on the engagement pictures too, but it was about a month ago, so I think we should be getting them any day now. I think. Anyway, so we continued our search. I kept going back to Kimberlee Miller, a wonderful local photographer that both Michele AND Lisa recommended. Her pictures on her website are absolutely beautiful. I was a bit worried about cost though. But we met with her and one of her associates. It turns out Kimberlee is already booked for our day, but her associate Danna (who is also amazingly talented) is free. And they offer a special rate for Walnut Grove. Done and done.

OFFICIANT:
This was another tough one for me. Even though the ceremony is like, the shortest part of the whole she-bang, it's also the most important! It's the reason we're all there in the first place, right? So I thought it was really important for us to find an officiant that really got us and who we are. There were 2 officiants that had been recommended to me by friends and other vendors, and they sounded perfect! They meet with the couple several times prior to the wedding. They get to know you, they make your ceremony personal. But they were both booked. Darn! The first snag we hit this whole time! So then we went to the next person Michele recommended. He was this sweet little older man, very nice. But very generic. I didn't feel like he was going to make our ceremony personal one bit. Plus he kept calling us Tristan and Ryan. Oh, and he charged $500. Yeah. Not happening. This part was starting to stress me out a bit. Then I remembered that my aunt had mentioned that my cousin (more specifically my cousin's wife) had officiated for her friends' wedding... cha-ching! So I researched some pretty vows and readings, decided that I am creative enough to put together a kick-ass ceremony, and then I asked my cousin if she wanted to officiate! And she was so excited I asked her! So that's one more thing to check off, and another awesome woman to help make our wedding dreams come true!

WEDDING PARTY
This part has been fun! The ironic thing about me and Brian is that he has more female friends than guy friends, and I have more guy friends than girl friends! But there were three people that I always knew for sure I would want standing up in my wedding. Of course, my brother Jeff. (There's one boy for Brian!) I always knew I would want my best friend Alexis to be my Maid of Honor. We've been friends since we played little league softball together in eighth grade. Then we played in high school and even college together! We've been friends for the last 14 years! The dynamic of our friendship has changed throughout the years, but she has always been there for me and I love her. My other "must have" is my friend Brigitte that I met my first year studying Kinesiology at CSUN. We were Bio lab partners. Although, I haven't known her as long as I've known Alexis, she quickly became one of my best friends. In fact, I owe a lot of who I am today- the girl Brian fell in love with- to Brigitte. She really got me out of my shell and we had all kinds of adventures together, from sending secret admirer gifts to our favorite professor to surfing and kayaking! Oh, such good times! Next on my list of girls, but certainly not least, I wanted Brian's sister Melissa to be in our wedding party. I've always wanted a sister and I'm so excited it's going to be her! She lives in Idaho, but I had the pleasure of meeting her at her wedding back in August, and she is just the coolest! She's so funny and easy to talk to. I wish she lived closer so we could hang out more.

Brian's boys already included Jeff, but he also knew he wanted to ask his friend Sean to be his best friend. They've been friends since high school, and Sean is Brian's best friend! Brian also asked our friend Kevin. Brian's known Kevin since high school, Jeff and Kevin played football together, and I've actually known Kevin for the last 4 or 5 years now. I though he was the perfect choice! For a while, we were just sticking with our 3 friends on each side, but lately, we've been spending a lot of time with Kevin and his girlfriend of four years Rachael. I had met her before, but didn't know her very well. Well it turns out that she is the sweetest girl, and someone that you can tell is just a good quality person. We've been spending so much time with them lately, and I've been getting to know her so well, that I knew I wanted her to be a part of our big day too! There's a fourth guy that Brian and I both knew we wanted as well. We actually were both thinking of him. But Brian hasn't actually asked him yet, so on the extremely off chance anyone will find this blog, I'm not going to post his name just yet. But he is also friends with Jeff and Kevin, so I think the whole party will be perfect!

I'm so excited!!!