Yay!!! Adam and I put the deposit down on our venue Monday afternoon!!! We were alittle worried about the fact that the country club went under new management and their wedding packages might change alittle. Just because of the pure fact that everything was included, well almost everything was included, and we didn't want to go with them if it wasn't staying that way. Luckily the new wedding cordinator told us everything would be the same, minus a few changes to the menu, only improvements as she says. I'm keeping my hopes up.

A big point the woman made was that they want to keep their current clients as happy as possible, and I completely understand that. All they need is one bad review from a couple our age to take away possible clients. Especially because of our age and people constantly asking for help with vendors, and because they are in the middle of trying to redo the club. I admitted to the lady that they were of course my first choice the moment we got engaged, and I was so incredibly excited to start the planning. Adam is a litle more skeptical but everything should be great.

They have a wedding preview at the end of Febuary, I of course will be going, just to get ideas and lots of photos to start my ideas from. I doubt Adam will be able to go, his work schedule is so crazy, all the time. I'll probably end up taking my maid of honor or something.

Adam said something to me the other day that made me laugh but made a lot of sense. Our 'theme' should most definitely be "Meant to Be". We have gotten so incredibly lucky with everything for this wedding. Adam is so incredibly happy right now with this wedding, but I think its more for the fact that we are... so far... under budget. Of course I will be spending some money on invites and FLOWERS but like I said, we have done exceptionally well, I mean a $99 dress, a $170 cake that feeds over 100... a complete wedding and reception for $2500... we are so incredibly blessed.

The girls are starting to ask when and what I want to do for the bridesmaid dresses. I told them from the get go that I want them to get them all from the same store/designer and they have to be the exact same color and material. I do not care what cut and length they have, because lets admit it, we are most definitely not cookie cutter girls. One is a ballet dance, ones a new mom, ones an amazon and one enjoys food like me :) None of my girls are the same, and yes I know every bride says this, but I want the girls to be comfortable and be able to wear the dress again. They will be like a chocolate brown, maybe with a teal sash, and most likely flip flops or relaxed sandles. Adam just made me promise he wouldn't have to wear brown (he hates the color, but has let me keep it as a wedding color because I love it so much) and I explained to him his will be black and white only, the boys wear brown vests or ties. So that made him incredibly happy. He keeps telling me I am making it super simple for him with this wedding, and I keep telling him he was crazy enough to want to marry me, how could I be a bridezilla?

Only upsetting news I have today is my rings. I accidently found my wedding band. It was going to be a surprise the day of the wedding, but I was looking for a pad of paper and it happen to hid it in that drawer. :( So of course I had to try it on, it was absolutely beautiful, it made me cry for a while, out of happiness of course. Its a "set"... not sure else how to explain it. My engagement ring fits inside the wedding band, I guess some people call them wraps. My diamond fits in the middle, there are two 1/2 carat diamonds on each side and then bagets on both side. Again, it is absolutely beautiful. But anyway, the rest of the bad news was that with the wedding band connected, the engagement ring cut off the circulation to my finger and hurt really bad. So Monday we dropped off my engagement ring to get resized, and it won't be back till next monday. So right now I have a irish cladah ring on my left hand ring finger. Luckily it is already Tuesday night, and hopefully this week will fly by.

We are hopefully wrapping the rest of the wedding up in the next month or two. I still have flowers, inviations, registry, tuxs, and overall decoration. I have basic ideas of what I want, lots of pictures. I keep secretly.... well only from Adam I guess... wanting to hire a photo booth for the reception. We recently went to one of my best friends weddings and her and her husband had a photo booth and it was so much fun! It was some of the silliest moments of the night and we have really cute memories to take home. I have found a couple that are "cheap" but I have to figure out a way to convince Adam its a good idea to spend close to a grand on something he will probably see as unnesseccary. Oh well, whats meant to be will happen. Let's just hope that if I am enough under budget he will be more willing to let me rent one. :)

Well I am heading back to work tomorrow. Adam and I have been on vacation for the last couple of days and its been great. We rented a hotel room and he surprised me with the romantic package of flowers, chocolate and champagne... oh and a private hot tub. :) I treated him to bonefish grill. We had some amazing food and a relaxing break from work and life.  I hate work but it pays the bills I guess.

Hope everyone is having a good week!!!

So after the big engagement surprise, my girlfriends and I decided to go and have fun at David's Bridal getting an idea of what kind of dress I would want for the big day.

The day started off normal, I grabbed a bite to eat and a big cup of coffee and drove to my appointment to try on wedding dresses. Carolyn, the wedding dress cordinator met us at the door. I got extremely lucky with this woman. She had helped my matron of honor pick out her wedding dress and was truly the warmest and sweetest woman at Davids. She immediately asked me what type of dress I wanted, and of course, I wanted the princess dress. I'm a pretty simple girl, but when it comes to my fantasy wedding dress, princess all the way!!!

She picked out some beautiful dresses, some I was alittle worried about at first, but I promised I would keep an open mind and try them all on.

We went down the line, some looked pretty, others just weren't right. Then came my final two. One was a dress Carolyn picked out, not really my idea of a princess dress but she begged me to try it on and then of course my dream dress, the one I had been eyeing for months as I helped my friend pick her dress out. It was a beautiful princess dress with a sweetheart neckline and gems all over the bodice. Carolyn had me try on her pick first, and as I walked out in front of the mirror all of my friends gasped as they saw me. I didn't think it would turn out the way it did, but it was the most beautifully breathtaking creation I had ever seen, and I looked absolutely beautiful. At that point I didn't even want to try on that dress that had been calling my name for so long. But as a good wedding dress consultant, she had me try it on anyway. It was also beautiful, but I couldn't stop thinking about the dress I had just tried on. You could tell by the look on my face that it just wasn't the same and I immediately took it off.

I immediately called Adam to get his approval for purchasing this marked down dress, from $2000 down to $500, which just happened to be discontinued and the last one in the store, and it just happen to be my size!! But Adam told me I needed to slow down, we had just in fact gotten engaged a week earlier... hehehe... and that if its meant to be it will still be there when we were ready to buy. i of course was heart broken but knew that he was right. I would have plenty of time to find another dream dress if it was gone when I went back.

I left David's bridal slightly depressed but I knew I would eventually get over it. Now anyone from Columbus will remember the power outage, that happened two days later.

So you would think this story was over, or at least paused till a later moment. But you would be wrong. Two days later, in the middle of the black out, Carolyn called me while I was at work, because of course I still had to go in. She excitedly told me that my dream dress had gone on clearence and it was marked down to $199 but if I came in that day, they would sell it to me for....... $99!!!!!!

So of course I left work and immediately went and picked it up. It was one of the most exciting moments of this wedding, to this day. Adam eventually caved and couldn't let me pass up this amazing deal, so I had my wedding dress the second week of our engagement.

So a lot has happened besides finding the most amazing dress. Adam and I have been extremely lucky in our wedding finds. We are keeping an extremely tight budget, not only because we are paying for it ourselves, but because we want to buy our first home. And when I say we are on a tight budget, I mean when I mention my budget to other brides, they look at me with a look of doubt its even possible. But I am extremely optomistic and believe that as long as Adam and I work together anything is possible. When we are together, we have extremely good luck.

So here is where we are so far:

We are, at this point, having our ceremony and reception at a golf course in Grove City. The ceremony will be outside on their balcony, later moved indoors for the reception. The guest list only consists of 75 people, only our closest family and friends. Unfortunately we couldn't afford to invite Adam's entire family, as it grosses over 180 people with just the immediate aunts, uncles and 1st cousins... my family is only 20 deep, and thats everyone. So we took the compromise of making it Columbus guests only, and then we are following our honeymoon up with a bbq for all our extended family, so they can at least celebrate with us in some way. For food at the reception, we figured we could cut costs by having a appitizer only night. We will have tons of food, but it just won't be a sit down dinner. The management is working with us on our miniumums to keep us under budget and it is well work half our budget for this beautiful location.

We found a wonderful photographer, who I basically had to beg to help us. He was the only one I found who was willing to work with my budget, and worked by the hour instead of by package. Our photographer alone was a third of what others were asking. We met with him last week for drinks to just go over everything and we couldn't have been happier with him and his work.

www.richimagesonline.com

We also got extremely lucky with our cake baker. I originally met her at a bridal show held in Columbus. She owns her own bakery, which she built in her basement. We met with her one sunday, and Adam, myself, Mom Powers and my matron of honor sat down and tried all of her cakes and fillings. Oh my gosh it was the best cake I have EVER eaten in my entire life. Her pricing was extremely reasonable and well under our budget, again. Its going to be a full four tiers, simple design with a humorous cake topper. My mom was alittle unhappy about the whole non-traditional cake topper, but it fits us much better and it adds alittle humor to the serious cake.

www.labellatorta.com

As far as the DJ goes, we are hiring Adam's cousin who works as a DJ in Cinnci. He originally didn't want us to pay him, kind of like a wedding gift. But we felt for the travel costs and his time we wanted to give him something. We explained to him that he is the only non-immeidate family coming, and he was coming as the DJ. He understood, but I think it made Adam alittle more happy to have another close family member being there. Adam's older brother Ben and JP (the cousin/dj) both play guitars and sing, so we are thinking of having them do some live music, they do a wonderful mix of hotel california on a 12 string. So that will be an exciting event. So there is another piece of our budget wedding that is falling into place, and another item putting us under budget.

Adam and my friends keep telling me I should do this for a living, planning budget weddings that still look like you spent a fortune. Luckily I am creative enough to do DIY projects like centerpieces and am willing to pass on big ticket items and go for something of the same class at a lower, more reasonable price. And believe me, Adam couldn't be happier that I am saving us money and get to spend more towards our house and honeymoon!!!

Adam unfortunately thinks we are almost done planning. And I guess in a way we kind of are. But I keep reminding him there is still a lot to figure out. Tuxs, bridesmaid dresses, flowers, invitations, and simple things that grooms sometimes overlook.

But overall I'm extremely excited and am looking forward to the rest of the planning. I will keep up to date with pictures and other ideas and finds I'm coming across.

So Adam and I got engaged back in September 2008, on my 22nd birthday. It came as a big surprise for me! I knew he was going to purpose, we talked about it all the time. But I would have never guessed it would have been on that day. We had a big dinner with his family, it happened to also be the birthday of Adam's younger brother Shaun.

So again, all of his family and our friends were gathered together for a celebratory dinner for Shaun and I. The food was great and there were lots of stories and laughs. It later got to the present time and lots of silly cards and simple gifts were exchanged. Thats when Adam came up to me, gave me a giant kiss and asked if we could go for a walk for a private moment. I of course got immediate butterflies but never thought it would be a proposal.

We went for a walk to a little pond by his parents house and thats when he handed me a cell phone. I looked at him rather confused, and he explained that his present was saved to the memory card on the phone. As I looked, they were voice notes from all our family and friends wishing me a wonderful birthday and how much they loved me, followed by a beautiful poem Adam wrote for me, telling me how much he loved me and how one day he will call me his wife, and that would be the happiest moment in his life. I immeidately started crying, and thats when my world changed forever. He bent down on one knee and pulled out a single rose, with writing all the way around it. And on that rose, it said, "Will you marry me?". I immediately jumped on top of him crying, and saying yes over and over again. We spent what seemed like forever hugging and kisses, me crying and continuously saying yes.

We returned back to his parents house with warm wishes, a couple tackles from the sister-in-law Lisa, and lots of pictures. I couldn't stop myself from smiling ear to ear and of course staring at my beautiful ring and my wonderful future husband. Of course we had tons of calls to make, most already knew and started screaming the moment they answered. Our amazing story got retold a least a hundred times and it never ever got old.