Sweat Clothing, Sweet Clothing?

OK. When did it become SO expensive to buy quality workout clothes? I mean they are clothes that are literally made to sweat buckets in, and yet a new outfit can cost more than a full winters' worth of eggnog lattes. I know what I'm buying.

For people who are just starting to get healthier, the expense of buying new workout shoes, workout pants, workout tops, and whatever else the cheery salesperson shoves down your throat, might be enough to make one rethink if this whole workout thing is even worth it.

I recently got an email advertising workout clothes from a well known athletic wear company, we'll call them "Smikey". I needed some clothing that was capable of being sweated buckets on, so I browsed through their stuff. After finding three outfits, which are not even enough to workout for a week I might add, I realized that those THREE outfits cost more than my law school books for last term. That's right people, the notoriously overly priced college textbooks you hear all about have nothing on athletic clothing. Or something like that. Needless to say, I didn't buy them. It wasn't just Smikey  though, it seemed like everywhere I looked my credit card started to stress-cry in my wallet.

Weigh buying over-priced workout clothes against the cost of not working out and suddenly buying overpriced pants to sweat in seems to be a more reasonable investment. Until the eggnog lattes call your name.  That might just be me though.

I decided instead to use The Google, to see if MAYBE somewhere, in the deep dark holes of the internet, there were quality, affordable, workout clothes. I wasn't even that disappointed by the results. 

I found Fabletics. It's a fab place to buy athletic wear? Anyways. I was a little skeptical that the quality was any good since it was affordable, but the outfits were really cute and I wouldn't have to take out a mortgage to buy something. I decided to buy an outfit, which is $29.99 for your first one. Yeah, UNDER THIRTY for an entire outfit. It gets more expensive after that, but not by much. When it got here I looked it over and it seemed quite capable of being worked out in, so I wore it to barre3 and it was fab-ulous. See what I did there? 

I also love Target for their workout stuff, but my cart always seems to miraculously fill with throw pillows and decorative birds when I shop there, so I avoid it. Try. I try to avoid it. I fail. 

Fall-inter

It's fall! You can tell because the Uggs are on and Pumpkin Spice is in the air, and the coffee, and in the donuts, and I think I saw it in jello yesterday? You also tell it's fall because EVERYONE is sniffling, coughing, and sneezing. Last year I got, what I will label as, the Charlie Sheen of colds, right in the middle of finals. Not pretty. So this year I'm gonna go ahead and never leave my house, which will work real well. It's a truly solid plan.

I'm having a hard time believing it's not actually winter though since every store I've been to is AAALLL about Christmas already. I may have almost caved and bought an ornament that a SUPER enthused lady at Costco was selling, but whatever. Go Christmas, I guess? Sorry, Thanksgiving and Halloween.

This Fall-inter I'm trying to not be completely and totally consumed with work, and be a well rounded individual. Or at least be a square with rounded edges. Right now that means procrastinating on finishing up a paper by writing on this blog. The rules are made up. What anyone ever means when they say they're "making time for other things" is not that they're cutting back on anything, but that they're cramming more into their day. So if you get a call from me at 2 AM because I want to catch up, that's why. You've been warned.

So how do master juggler's do it? My vote is a time turner. Since I never got my Hogwarts acceptance letter (jerks) I guess I need to figure something else out.

Challenge!

Copyright : barre3, @realfoodwholelife, @becomingannie

Follow up- right after I posted about barre3 some of the barre3 ambassadors on Instagram threw out this AWESOME deal. Since I had some general curiosity questions from people about what barre3 is, I figured I'd share this promo so that if you want to try it out for yourself you can! Just do what the picture says and you should be good. 

28 to Great is a four-week total body program that gives you some fantastic recipes to try, and access to all the amazing online workouts barre3 has. A.K.A it's a totally doable, healthy, kicker of butts everywhere. I'm doing it because I like smoothies, healthier ones now, and want someone else to tell me what-all I should be putting in my gullet. If you want a legit explanation, hop on over to realfoodwholelife where Robyn explains the whole plan in better detail. 

M and I had a whirlwind of a weekend. Between me applying for internships, writing a paper, M preparing to teach his first college class, going to a department party, and hosting a BBQ, I thought I would be worn out. A year ago, I would have been, but not today! Mostly because the grad students in M's program are AMAZING and cleaned up pretty much the entire house so we wouldn't have to, but also because I've been eating better foods and been working out. BONUS: I was able to walk in heels for an entire night, for literally the first time IN MY LIFE.  Which is all barre3. Win. At our wedding I think I had my heels on for a grand totally of two hours before I gave up. 

*Also, I know I've been talking this place up a lot, but I don't work for barre3 or anything like that. Not that I wouldn't absolutely LOVE to. However, my opinions are all my own. Consult a doctor before you start a new workout plan and everything. I think I heard that off a heartburn commercial once, probably applies here. 

Goldfish in the Gym

SO. This blog has definitely evolved over the few years that I've hassled with it. I still love that McDonald's does weddings though.

Now I'm in my SECOND year of law school and even though it has been the most difficult, and honestly sometimes most nerve racking thing I have ever done, I've found that I absolutely love learning about the law and being challenged everyday.  Now that I'm past all the mandatory classes, I get to choose the classes I take which has been some mixing of children and family law. Who'd of guessed that would happen with my love of weddings...POW blew my mind.

The thing they don't tell you about law school is what a marathon of work it is. Now, I've never completed a marathon. I figure the rest of the fam's got that covered. I'm usually head of the "drink eggnog and down candy corn while fit people run past" brigade myself, so I didn't know what was coming.  By the second semester of my first year, I was feeling like a literal carton of eggnog, forgotten in the back of the fridge since last Christmas that someone kicked for good measure. I couldn't find a schedule that worked well for me, so I was up late with readings for classes and legal research and writing work. Which meant I just ate whatever was laying around. Which was usually M's food. #sorrynotsorry. I also didn't work out, because...eggnog.

After I threw my back out, you know, like 90-year-old's often do, I decided that I should probably figure out a plan before I ended up on some spin-off of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. Not that I would ever turn that opportunity down. I then realized I was useless as a member of any gym, ever. A goldfish would have a better idea of what to do in that place than I did. I knew I needed a real person to tell me, in small words, what I should do to workout. That's when I went back to barre3, which is a workout class, led by a real person. Win.

The last time I had been to barre3 was 6 months prior, and I literally could not walk down stairs after the workouts, they were so hard. There was a lot of cardboard-butt sliding down the stairs in those days because we lived in a house of stairs.. It seemed. So I was reluctant, you could say, to go back. But I did, because I forced myself to buy the unlimited classes package and the only way to justify that was by actually going. What kept me going was/is my pact app, which I have a real love-hate relationship with, but I haven't lost my workout bet yet and it pays me in real mullah...so I guess it works.

When I went back to barre3 again, and started going 4-5 times a week, I instantly felt like a solid 75-year-old after the first month. Luckily, the barre3 studio in my town has a class that allows me to workout before my day really starts, which meant I was ACTUALLY AWAKE for my 9am classes. Huzzah, I'd found the cure-all, and it wasn't coffee. It wasn't all coffee, I should say. After two months I decided to try eating less like a child in the Willy Wonka Factory, and more like an "actual adult." Which again barre3 had me covered. If you can't tell, I thrive on the "not-having-to-think-about-it-ness." Now, 9 months later I've lost 25 pounds and counting. SUCK IT EGGNOG.

Dreaming of a U-haul

We've started moving.

Not really. I don't hate all of it. I love the house we're moving to and I love the reason we're moving. We wanted to be closer to the university because I'm going to be a law student this year and M's continuing on with his PhD! As I've started boxing things up though, I've come to the conclusion that our possessions break down to 85% Christmas decorations, 7% cat toys, 3% camping gear, and 5% things normal people have in their houses. While we're extremely excited, there are always the inevitable stages of grief that seem to come with packing a house and moving all your cat toys and miscellaneous crap to the new one.

Denial

You naively say to yourself that this move will be soooooo easy. We're moving pros and I have all these great tips from pinterest! Besides, we don't have that much stuff and most of it is already in super awesome storage bins XD. We learned last time we moved that having things already in storage bins streamlines the process so well! But wait! What's all that stuff not in the storage bins? Where'd that kitchen table come from, or the kitty litter box, or worst of all your clothing? That's when you hear the sound of pacman dying off in the distance and you realize how very, very wrong you were.

Anger

"Mother of God, what just fell on me???" "Was it rice? Was it a nest of spiders?" "$#%@ SPIDERS!! IT WAS SPIDERS!!!!".

Bargaining

 "If I can just stuff this Halloween costume I've had for eleven years into this last box I promise I will go to church every day. EVERY. DAY."

Depression

This is the stage where you crawl into a dark and box free corner of the house and start blogging about moving.

 Acceptance

Haphazardly get the rest of it to fit in whatever box it'll squish into and start training your cat to jump in and out of any extra moving boxes. He needs the exercise.

  

 

Hey there, it's been awhile..

If there are any real live people reading this you might notice that it's been an entire year since I've posted anything. You might be thinking I've committed the ultimate blogging sin and should be subjugated to some sort of internet penance; like glueing my eyeballs open for a 24 hour viewing of "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo". Not that I'm hating on Honey Boo Boo, that child is seriously on to something with her whole wanting an extra finger to grab more cheese puffs thing.

So why am I risking my eyeballs and getting back in the blogosphere? Is it some sort of New Years resolution? Nostalgia of blogging? A need to address some of the awesome celebrity wedding trends of 2012?? No. Nothing deep or introspective brought me back, it was some 3AM godawful dance exercise  infomercial -_-. Think Richard Simmons Jazzercize but with more yelling and generally less optimism about life. Zumba? It must have been Zumba.

I will never fall asleep with the TV on again, because dazedly waking up to some perky women in missed matched spandex yelling at my sleeping butt to get up an do some sort of dance number, so I can fit into a dress only 14 year old girls should be able to fit into, resulted in the worst nightmares in my life. My real life wedding dress was way too big for me to wear until about a week before our wedding day. You can imagine the hilarious tent-sized-wedding-dress nightmares that ensued from that.  This nightmare was like that but just for kicks added Jillian Michaels yelling "Dance, fatty! DANCE!!". It wasn't all bad though, it reminded me about my neglected blog. It also reminded me how much I really do like cheese puffs.

Speaking of our wedding, As of New Years Eve we've been married now for an entire year! Yay!! The year itself has gone by just about as fast as Ryan Lochte would pass Honey Boo Boo in a race, any race, but it's been one of my favorite years with M so far. If you're thinking "wait, didn't she just say they've only been married a year???" Yes, but we dated for a gabizillion years before we were married. Sorry if that blew your mind.

Anyways, this year we both graduated college, one of us went back for more school, the other entered the  perpetual soup kitchen that seems to be the job market for new college graduates. "Please Sir, may a have another job at any fine fast food establishment?" As frustrating as that's been it's pushed me into applying for grad programs that I've wanted to do for a long, long time. Hopefully when I graduate I won't be the most educated unemployed person to have ever lived :D.

Besides that, it actually has been a pretty amazing year. We moved, met new people, I picked up some photography gigs after putting together a portfolio and applied to grad schools, we got a shiny new sister, learned we were going to be an aunt and uncle again, saw friends and family, took road trips to amazing places when we could, learned to roast a duck, and cooked a legit, adult sized, Christmas dinner. At the end of the year we rang in the new year together in our favorite city watching fireworks go off at the Space Needle. All I can say is that the crazy wedding dress tent nightmares were worth it, being married to your best friend is WAY better than having an extra cheese puff finger. Sorry, Honey Boo Boo. Happy (very belated) New Years everyone!!!

Well... it's officially 40 days until the wedding. and I am officially OMFG EXCITED!!!! The wedding has also sneakily taken over my life..which I'm totally ok with, cause come on, I freaken love weddings.. and eggnog lattes, God those are amazing.

Between my allergicness to exercise, being a college student, and my love of stuffing, the holidays are going to make fitting into my too big dress juuust a little bit easier hahaha. At least I'll save a few pennies from not having to get my dress fitted!

So what's a girl to do? EAT MORE STUFFING!!! wait, no...bad.

Anyways, here're some possibly tolerable, cheap ways to exercise!

Go to a thrift store and buy a 1980's workout video (and probably a VCR)! Or just youtube it...Whatever-Did someone say Jean Simmons?! Hells yeah!! Plus, even if you don't really work out, your tummy will be getting a good workout from laughing at the awesomeness of the outfits ;).

Groupon some dance classes! A) I need to learn how to do more than the "driving the car into the electric slide" thing for the wedding. B) see "A"

Buy a shake weight- cause you know you want to try it ;) hahaha

This one's totally booring but sorta awesome- Use water bottles (with water in them) as weights. If you want to be truly awesome, don't add water. Then see how long it takes for someone to point this out while laughing their behinds off at you ;)

Check out this awesome site- Divine Diva -It's a free site that tells you what workouts you need to do when you choose what you want to work on. Subsequently I found that you are not in fact working your triceps much by lifting the remote to change the channel.

What awesome-cheap-funtastic ways do you workout

Simple Steps to Keeping Your Sanity While Doing DIY Invites

Step One: Make him do it.

Just kidding, but more power to you if he agrees! DIY invites are great, they're reasonably priced and they come in a wide variety. While you may be patting yourself on your back for saving a few hundred bucks, and you totally should be because come on that's awesome, don't celebrate too long. The reason they're so cheap is because the labor of printing, assembling and tying 100 tiny bows is not included. which brings me to...

Step Two: Have a small army of assemblers.

It took me, Mike, his mom and my mom a week straight of doing nothing but printing, assembling, stuffing, un-stuffing, re-stuffing, printing address labels, sticking on said labels, sticking stamps and shipping. The more people you have the faster it (should) go.

Step Three: People don't read the fine print so have backups.

Case in point, when we printed out the response cards we put on them "please initial by your food choice". So far, we've had two cards out of thirty come back with initials and some didn't even come back with names... It helped that we put a number on the back of the card and recorded it on a guest list incase they didn't write their name on the response card. Props to Mike's mom for that idea!

Step Four: Once you have an invite put together, take it to a post office.

This one's an oldy but a goody. Our invites weren't that heavy, but they had a bow on them. When we took them to the post office we found out that because of said bow, our invite couldn't be "machine processed" which meant we got to pay for the 64 cent stamps. You never now what weird rule there might be so check before you put stamps on!!

Step Five: If you're invite doesn't have an inner envelope try to find one (even if it looks like poo).

You may think it's kind of wasteful or stupid to have two envelopes, but they will help keep you sane when you get a few returned invites that aren't beaten to death. We searched five different stores to find some but no dice. We decided to send them without a second envelope and when a few got returned to us they were war torn. Some had survived with only a few bruises but some came back with the ends totally torn and that's with them being "not machine processed".

Step Six: Invest in some good tequila.

Because by the end of this you're going to need it ;)

Pillow Talk: DIY Ring Bearer Pillow

If there's one thing I hate more in this world than my sewing machine it's being board. And last night as Mike had left for Vegas and all of my friends were subsequently out of town, I had two options. One; watch a marathon of Desperate Housewives, or two; do anything else. After I finished downing a few slices  of pizza and 2 buck chuck (which is no longer 2 bucks), I decided to do both. Because hey, everyone loves to watch a little crazy now and then.

So I decided to take out the 'ol sewing machine I had hidden away in the back of the closet and make myself a ring bearer pillow for my wedding. After two minuets I remembered why it was hidden. It's the devil's sewing machine. So instead of continuing to curse at an intimate object, I decided to sew the stupid thing by hand. It was relatively easy, so I decided to share my lazy-girls version of how to make a ring bearer pillow.

First I laid out my fabric and cut it to an inch bigger than the size I wanted the final project to be. It was  was two layers, so I had to sew that together first (gag).

Then I traced around that handy dandy square thing so the pillow wouldn't come out looking like an Ugly Doll and pinned the sides with safety pins. 

Once the layers were sewn together and looked like this I placed them together, the pretty sides facing each other and stitched 3/4 of the pillow together. Leaving room to stuff the stupid thing.

That's how much I left open. At this point I frantically called my grandma, who actually does know how to sew, and asked her how to sew this part together without it looking like a stitch job from a back ally doctor. 

I forgot to take a picture of the post stuffing/stitching but this is generally what it looked like. 

Then I went two work on the flower. Because I wanted a flower. If you don't want a flower on yours don't do this step. So, I cut out a bunch of "petal shapes" and lined them up and sewed a straight line across the bottom. Once I was done, I kind of scrunched them all together by pulling on the end of the stitch where the needle was.

After that I sewed the two ends of the flower together and BAM flower. However the inside sucked so I decided to make a button with fake pearls from an old necklace.

Old necklace+ round piece of paper+ glue gun+ burnt fingers= Button (yay). Seriously though, use some freaking oven mitts. Hot glue hurts. 

Then I stitched the flower to the pillow, glued the button with some ribbon to the flower (which I later cut off because it was ugly) and WAH-BAM ring bearer pillow.

The Furry Werepig

I frequently find myself saying "Oh we've gotten all the big stuff out of the way, now we just have the little stuff to figure out." Of course what I really mean is, "All we have to do now is the all encompassing, time consuming, and wallet draining menial tasks that will eventually make us feel like we've taken on two other jobs and simultaneously downed some meth." Smile*

Just kidding... Sort of. Planing a wedding can be a "itch-bay". See, that's pig latin or something for...well you get it. Especially when you have say, a job, or school, or a cat that has to be kept away from  his food dish, otherwise he'll turn into a "ginormo-kitty". I call him the furry warepig. It's very time consuming.

Anyways, the point is, don't try to go it alone! Enlist the help of others! Friends, family, or if you're like me and have zero family within 400 miles, total strangers! Seriously, there're a lot of people looking for jobs around here and I am not folding 400 place settings by myself.

Oscar The Grouch

If you think you like having things done yesterday, think again when it comes to planning your own wedding. When people say that planning a wedding is tantamount to taking on a second job, they're right! Except the little part of you get to do the paying instead of getting payed. If you do make that mistake, like I have time and time again, realize two things. One, and I'll put it nicely, you're going to make Oscar the Grouch look like a cuddly teddy bear. I don't care how much your fiancé  says he likes Sesame Street, he won't be thrilled to be living with Oscar's crankier cousin. Two, whatever it is that your doing will look better, be less stressful, and actually turn out the way you want it to if you give yourself time to do it right. Is this always realistic? No. but if you can give yourself more time on something DO IT!

For example, this last week we decided to get all the venders booked and out of the way. Sounds great right, check things off the list and everything? That's what I thought, but after meeting with the florist, DJ, photographer, cake lady, church, and caterer/venue manager my brain was a crispy-fried-critter. And when your brain's a crispy-fried-critter that's when an inevitable catastrophe seems to arise. Like ours of "A priest can't actually marry anyone outside a church building." I'll give you three guesses where our wedding is taking place. And no, there are no oversized bells where we're getting married.

If my brain had not been in its delicious country fair state, I may have been able to handle it a little better. instead I turned into a something you might see on say, The Vampire Diaries. Except more angry, and waaay less sexy.

Point is, everyone has their limit as far as stress goes. So don't over do it just because you want to get everything out of the way.

Reasons why couples think registries suck, and rock

After talking, ok bitching, to many grooms and brides to be who, like me, feel like they're the kid who has a room filled with legos, but keeps getting more every holiday, I discovered we pretty much all had the same complaints and loves about registries! So here they are, hot off the complain-o-press.  Do you have any qualms or reason you love registries? Put them in the comments!

1. Sucks-  Most couple's today don't need more stuff.
Registries are great for people who lived apart before jumping the broom. Today though, more and more people are getting married later in life, have already established careers, and are living together long before they get married. Long story short, they have everything they need. Maybe there are a few things they can replace, but for the most part they're good. And yes, there's always asking guests to donate to a charity, contribute to the honeymoon blah, blah, blah, but what many couple's really need is money, mullah, the green stuff. Which brings us to...

2.  Sucks- You can't just ask for cash.
Yes, I am going to sound ungrateful, it's not what I'm going for, but here we go. Any who, I get why gifts at a wedding can be important. Cash can seem impersonal to some people, and it's nice for people to get you something tangible. But for most couples, young or old, cash is the only thing they could actually use more of. They'd like to have a "registry" towards a downpayment on a house, instead of new table linens, unless you're Will and Kate. Then I guess you could just use more weird hats.

3.  Sucks- You're supposed to hit a "set amount" of gifts in different price ranges.
This one's all me. So, you don't literally have to hit set prices. There are no "registry price police" that will come get you if you don't have 20 items between $50.00 and $100.00. Personally though, I want to scream a little every time my registry says I need 60 more items in the $100-$200, 40  more things in the $200-$300 range, etc.

4.  Sucks- It's not that simple to connect your registries if you have multiple ones.
Now there are sites that can conglomerate all your stuff together like GiftRegistry360 and such, but as one bride to be told me, there are almost always glitches. Either with stuff not showing up from one registry, or guests just not knowing how to use it, etc.

5. Sucks- The web registry was made by a chimp that's taken one web design class.
Now, I love chimps, I think most chimps could make far better websites then many web design majors I know. But the one that makes wedding registries should just go back to eating bananas and throwing poop around. Anyways, Macy's I'm talking to you. I just want to be able to organize my gifts myself so people aren't looking at my registry going "how the hell did a serving plate get thrown in with electronics..."

6. Sucks- There's no good tier system. 
I touched on this yesterday, but this is something I keep hearing from brides. That there's no way to say "I want this, after this please!" Does this seem a little OCD and controlling? Yes. That's ok though. Nobody wants to register for a mixer and an attachment, then get the attachment because it's more affordable, but not receive the mixer. That was just one example, and the tier system certainly wouldn't be most to least expensive, just what you really do need to what you really want.

7. Rocks-You can replace all your broken, over-used, mis-matched stuff
Mike and I have been living together for about two years now and have a mix of two sets of college stuff, garage sale stuff, his great-grandmothers stuff, my moms stuff, his moms stuff, and some of our own stuff we bought. Luckily most of it's kitchen ware, but man will it be nice when we have our own stuff that matches!

8. Rocks- You can register for pretty much anything.
With todays technology, and the advent of mega-stores you can register for just about anything (except cash). For example, I know someone who registered for a full-on snow cone machine. I've heard of people registering for iPads, dogs, life-sized clown statues and the like.  If you can dream it, and have the room for it, you can register for it.

9. Rocks- Registry rewards!!!
Macy's, this one I love you for. Some registries, like Macy's and I think William Sonoma(?) carry incentives with your registry. Like getting 10% cash back from a completed registry, or receiving mixing bowls or something when you've hit a certain price point for a brand.

10. Rocks-Helpfull staff
I don't always think this one rocks. But sometimes helpful sales clerk can save your bum when you're trying to figure out what silverware goes with what plate setting, or if you should double register for things etc.

Fiestaware? No, really. Where is it?

I went into Macy's a few days ago, on my never ending hunt to find fitting jeans, and instead fell in love. With Fiestaware! Or is it just Fiesta? Anyways, like I said, I'm in love. So naturally I drug my faince' over to the regitry counter to get a scanning gun and went to town! Only seven months early, but that's neither here nor there. I had a blast trying to find a turquoise teapot, whilst Mike had a blast seeing if he could scan the ceiling. He could not.

After dropping, chipping, and flat-out breaking many of our plastic dinnerware pieces, I'm confident in saying that I was the reason the phrase "this is why we can't have nice things" came to be. So we've decided to opt-out of the whole "nice china" thing and instead go with dinnerware that will just last us a long time, and is somewhat cheaply replaceable...Plus the colors are so fun!

While the whole registering part went great, for me anyways, when I got online to view our registry I wanted to cry. Everything was so disorganized! I'm not sure how Macy's decided that the soup bowls belong at the bottom of the page, far-far away from all the rest of the dinnerware. Or that a serving plate belongs in a whole different section from the rest of the serving stuff, but wow do I think it's a mess. I think it'd be great  if they just left the organization up to the couple! That and have some sort of tier system of "I would like this, then this" etc etc. Because no one wants a pasta attachment for a mixer, but no mixer to attach it to.

So Macy's if you're listening, which you totally are. not. Please, please, please make your registry system more user friendly!

Did I hear you were going to...

Something I've learned from planning a wedding, is to never ever, under any circumstances, say you're doing "A" and then do "B". People are allergic to change.

Ok, that's not possible and happens about every other minute when you're planning a wedding. My mom is still, somewhat jokingly, on me about having a summer wedding, which we had originally planned.

Apart from my mom's joking, I've seriously had people come to me complaining about the most random things. Things that I had no idea effected anyone but myself and Mike. Like what we put on our save the dates, or what color our wedding website is..

So how do you deal with  -"I heard you're getting buttercream frosted cake. I just wanted to let you know that buttercream is gross and I will smoosh it on your face if you serve it to me..." and no, unfortunately that was not a real conversation, it's just would totally happen.

Do you submit to their demands of having twelve tier wedding cake? Get a bouncy house and clown to entertain their misbehaving kids?

I'd love to say NO! put down your foot in every instance, it's your wedding!! But that's not always the case. Sometimes people have actual good reasons for complaining or suggesting things...I think. Then there are people who keep suggesting you rent a camel to ride in on, and all you can say is "huh".

Anyways, I guess it comes down to being understood and being understanding at the same time. Can you bend a little on if kids are allowed at the rehearsal dinner? Maybe, if it doesn't really matter to you. But should you bend on something important that will effect price too much or ruin your experience? Nope.

Side note: Many people I know have much more wedding sense than I do, and I'm extremely thankful to have them around. Actually Mike is probably even more thankful to have people to organize my ideas..Otherwise we might be having a circus themed wedding, in Cancun, on a cruise liner...which would be SO COOL!!! Right??

Oh hair, where art thou?

You know when you go into get one of those experimental "I want to tottally alter my look" haircuts? We'll I did just that two days before I got engaged I chopped off most of my hair. I mean it was short befor that, but I wanted a cute bob. And it is, only problem is I'm getting married in seven months and this is my hair... grown out...

I looove my short hair, but want it long for my wedding because, well I do. So I've been soliciting advice from hair stylist friends and other experts in the field (google), on what I can do to grow my hair out fast, and so far the resounding opinion is pre-natal vitamins! Which, if you're not pregnant, buying them is SUPER awkward. Especially when the inevitable "so when are you due?"..."uh I'm getting them to grow my hair out"..."wink* Ok, right" conversation comes up between you and the cashier, or random-super-conservative-friend-you-never-regularly-see-except-when-you-happen-to-be-buying-pre-natal-vitamins-seven-months-before-your-wedding... Never-the-less, I'm going to try it and if nothing else I'll have really nice nails, because apparently they do that too!

Practical, Posh and Pretty Bridesmaids' Gifts

I had a nightmare last night that it was our wedding day but we had forgotten the wedding favors and all of our guests were throwing temper-tantrums demanding little bags of candy. I woke up in a cold sweat, and then realized.."oh right, our wedding is almost a whole year away, we don't have to worry about that yet."  The favor's I'm not so concerned about yet, the bridal party gifts however have got me a little worried. What do you get you're bridal party? I found a few places and websites that have great tools to help you navigate the bridal party gift waters.

Macy's Wedding Shop
This cool little website helps you find pretty much anything you'd need for your big day. You can create a head to toe look for your attendants, find jewelry and shoes, and they even have great attendant gifts!

Wedding Star 
This website/magazine is a great one-stop-shop for, well, pretty much everything. They have great unique items for your attendants as well as inspirational tips.

Things Remembered
If you're looking for personalized gifts, lets say a engraved flask or compacts, then they're your go to guys. They have a wedding section with idea's for bridesmaids and groomsmen gifts.

Boudoir Photography

So keeping up with the theme of my last blog, I found another new trend in wedding photography, boudoir photography! I've been trying to scrounge together my venders for my wedding..which has been a blast so far since nearly 90% of the people I wanted are either already booked, or moving. Any who, whilst I was researching photographers in the area, I started noticing something, almost half of them had a "boudoir" section. Not really knowing what it was, I clicked and actually didn't find the shots that un-classy, gross, or pornographic. You'd have to be pretty comfortable in your own skin to do it, which I'm personally not, but if you can get over that, then more power to you! It might make a sexy gift for your husband or bride to be. If you do go that route, I'd suggest buying a safe to keep them in so no nosey relatives ever "accidentally" finds them ;)!

What do you think? Would this be a great memento of the glory days, or is it too much?

First Look Photo Sessions

Haven't heard of them? Me either, until today when my wedding photog friend Emily posted something on my wall. Basically, what they are is a photo session on your wedding day of just you and your fiancé seeing each other for the first time. Instead of you two seeing each other for the first time walking down the isle, you do pictures of the two of you in a more intimate setting, away from all the eye's of your friends and family.

This could either be really cool, or not so much, depending on the couple. If you've always wanted the big reveal of you walking down the isle, then this route isn't for you. However, there's something very special about seeing each other for the first time on your big day. And how awesome would it be to be able to capture the looks on both your faces when you see each other for the first time?

What do you think of this new trend?

Discount Designer Dresses

At my old high school we had to do these things called "Senior Projects". For those of you who don't know what that is, or had a sane high school that only required community service, it's basically just a opportunity to explore a career or passion. A year or two after I graduated, a girl decided she'd put together a discount prom dress day for her senior project. Fed up by the cost of having to buy a dress that would only be worn once, she petitioned the community to donate gently used prom dresses, to be sold at the high school gym half price the retail value. After I've looked at a few wedding dress stores, and seeing the prices,  I understand her frustration at women having to pay so much for a dress they would only wear one day.

Now don't get me wrong, I understand that a wedding dress is way more sentimentally important then a prom dress but wow, can they be expensive. At the same time buying a quality dress is important. So what's a girl to do? I don't know, BUT there's this amazing place online that my sister showed me called preownedweddingdresses.com. They have basically any designer you could ever want and the dresses are all significantly discounted. While some of the dresses have been worn once, I found a few that still had the tags on! Now, I've never used this site so it is a little "buyer beware", but I am noticing that physical shops like this, that either rent or sell wedding dresses, are popping up everywhere. While you might need to make some alterations and adjustments, you could save a pretty penny.

Doing it yourself

I love the idea of doing things yourself, especially when that means you save a whole lot of dough. The problem with it? The amount of times I mess something up before I get it right, and then making sure I can repeat the process without a huge glitter-glue catastrophe!

I live all the way up in Oregon and when I wanted to ask my would-be-bridesmaids to be in the wedding I ran into a problem. They live pretty much everywhere except Oregon. I couldn't just ask them all at once, or ask them individually without racking up a some impressive credit card debt for travel expenses. So I decided to figure out another way to ask. 

Our wedding's going to have a peacock theme so I was looking all over etsy for peacock related items. I found a few cute things but nothing that I loved. So one day I was getting school books at the Duck Store in Eugene, and all the sudden I saw them. They were these blank cards with peacock feathers and they were on sale!!! 

So I bought them and went to town, trying to figure out a way to squish in "will you be my bridesmaid" on the card, and avoid the somewhat ginormous feather. 

This was the first...few, attempts. It worked super well as you can see, but eventually after kicking my printer a few times, and enlisting the help of my fiancé we figured it out. 

The final product wasn't exactly up to Martha Stewart quality, but I was happy with them. Most importantly, all the women I asked said yes!

What DIY did you do for your wedding? Did it work out, or was it so not worth the effort?