So bicostalbride tagged me in this 10 things about you post. I currently don't have the time to do it how the other posts are but i will come up with a few things:

1) I do not have much of a creative personality. It takes alot of time and thinking to come up with something creative, but i do enjoy doing crafts and so i usually take someone elses idea to make it for myself.

2) I have an over organized personality. I think things out way too much and I cant complete any tasks without a list. I started thinking about things for my wedding almost 2 years before getting engaged.

3) Nursing school is kicking my butt. it takes all the energy out of me but i couldnt imagine doing anything else. the ability to save someones life is amazing

4) I absolutely love love love the beach, its actually something me and FH do together alot. If I didn't always dream of the traditional church wedding, I would probably have a beach wedding. During the summer we are the beach at least twice a month

5) Along with the beach we love to travel. we haven't made it to many far away places besides florida and wv, but we go everywhere. our honeymoon is most likely gonna cover this by going to the beaches in europe. best part- i finally get a passport

6) Kevin is going to turn my best friend into my cousin when we get married

7) I never watch 90210 when it origionally aired, now that the reruns are on, i cry everytime i see the last episode/donna and davids wedding

8) I like to refer to this as my "small bladder problem" .. its really annoying

9) I can't wait to have kids. really really cant wait

10) My nephew (best friends son) is my world, i love him to death and I can't wait til they move closer to jersey (west virginia is too far away!)

Now this may be a little bit too personal to be putting on here so im gonna try to leave out a lot of details but i have a major problem

First part, last year my best friend stopped talking to me for a ridiculous reason. and well im not the type of person who gets passed that and moves on, i dont like to lose my friends. so it is very hard for me to picture having this day without her. when for the past 8 years i imagined her standing next to me on the altar and now she cant even manage a congradulations on getting engaged

that just adds to the drama that i am currently going through

a year ago my nana (dads side) got into a fight with my mom, and although it was big, it seemed to be over because we had seen them since and it was normal. up until my parents vow renewal last month and no one on my dads side came, my nana & aunt came to only the church but didnt come back to the house afterwards. now basically a recent update from this weekend is that my dad was basically cut out of the family and they refuse to come to the house ever again including my engagement party and bridal shower and the biggest shocker is none of them will come to the reception, they will go to the church but not to the reception. this is the only big family that i have, without them i have a total of 9 family members from my moms side coming.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what I should do to try to make them come. I have actually been really close with them for all my life and dont want them to miss this

Any words of advice or words of wisdom would be appreciated

I hope all of you out there are not having family issues for your wedding. This is our time and its supposed to be full of joy.

So we are decided on having our reception at this location! We got our proposal for how much everything is going to cost, and besides trying to figure out about the chinaware rentals we are agree to everything and just have to put down the down payment which unfortunately there is two of them, one for the receptiona and one for the caterers.

www.thecommunityhouse.com

this is a picture of how it is going to look once the renovations are done. When we went and looked at it, almost everything was done and looks just as amazing, we just didnt get to see the carpet with the tables set up

The church is booked as well! We received our booklet to pick out the readings that we want which was pretty exciting to go through. I wish there were pictures online that I could post of the church, (i would feel weird snapping pictures in church) but it is a pretty gorgeous church for being in Philadelphia, On Sunday, we are taking an hour drive with one of the groomsman and the best man to go talk to another priest about co celebrating the ceremony. The men are pretty excited about it.

I have actually been very surprised by how much my fiance wants to have an input on what's going on. origionally he even said it was my day just let him know what I am planning. But just so far up to this point he has had an opinion about basically everything! I am very lucky to have him so opinionated with this.

My parents come home today from a cruise so hopefully we get a chance to show them our reception location. Not much will be accomplished this weekend because those lovely things called midterms are going to get in the way of enjoying the weekend.

I was wondering if anyone knows where I can find glassware and china (besides my caterer) for a cheap price?

Because we are using an outside caterer for our location we are paying 6$ a person for chinaware and 3$ a person for glassware.

I would just like to know if I could cut costs by doing this myself.

And later I will update about my successful weekend!

We finally got in touch with our church to set up a wedding planning meeting! We met Sunday at 1pm to talk with the priest and figure out a date. He said that their 2011 calendar is completely free (total perk to getting married so far away is not having to worry about already taken dates) Our next step is to talk with the church's other priest.

The church is a very small parish with around a 100 congregants. From 1998 until about 2004 there was a priest/monsignor there that my fiance was very close with. He was practically a father figure to  him since he lost his dad at a young age. When the monisgnor  relocated everyone was depressed. My fiance still wants him to be a co-priest for our wedding so we need to find out if he is available and willingly to come back for us.

I guess also we need to start pre marital counseling. That always makes me nervous

I am determined to book my reception hall before the end of the year! I wish the church was done already. This weekend we went to look at reception halls and tried to book our church.

Saturday we visited one reception hall which does catering both on and off the premise. I liked everything about the catering: the cost, what was included, the people, the help, how it is set up, etc. However, I had a problem with the dance floor. I was hoping for something a little bigger and this was small and the DJ had to be set up on the floor. Originally I had a problem because the location isn't necessarily the prettiest but  we found out that they have a nice spot for pictures.  The location is great for our "multiple location wedding" It is located in New Jersey and is only 12 minutes away from our church ceremony in Philadelphia.

Sunday I was supposed to look at another catering place so that I could get a comparison, but I ended up watching the Giants game instead. After the game my fiance and I drove past two other locations.  We also drove by a boathouse which would be absolutely beautiful but it costs an extra $1378 and I am not sure the price is worth it.  I thought maybe we could still do pictures along the Cooper River and still have my reception at a different location. So many decisions.

Sunday we also attempted to ask about having our wedding at my fiancé's church.

First off, my mom has not been very happy about this, I went to catholic school up until 8th grade and my mom still thinks I should get married in that church even though NONE of us have gone there since 2001. I absolutely love the church and my memories there, but I don't think it is right to have it there when no one in my family has gone there for years.  Plus Kevin has been going to his church since he was born and I have been going with him since 2004. My mom also doesn't like the church because it is in Philly.

At church we were brought to the altar where they said a prayer, and asked us where we were getting married. Kevin said hopefully here. However, we never got to officially ask because he had somewhere to go immediately after the service.  We did talk to the deacon after mass and he made it seem like it should be available for that day. Hopefully we can find out this week so we can make it official!

!

I have a very bright personality and I love bright colors. My love of colors made it for me to decide our wedding colors because I like them all.

But we finally have some winners, howevever, we are doing it a little different and having 4 colors but the 2 main colors are still up in the air.

1. tangerine/ coral

2. orchid/ watermelon

3. chartreuse/ clover

4. turquoise/ oasis

Okay so even though I probably should start with the Church/ Reception site (we have the church picked just need to check to make sure its available for our day) the thing I am most concerned with is Photography.

I am still in college and not graduating until 2010 so money is a little limited. Plus I am basically a very cheap person. I do not like to spend a lot of money if any.

Finding a photographer is going to be the hardest part. I want my photographer for at least 8 hours 9 preferable. But i do not want to spend a ton of money.

What I am getting at is how have all of you found your photographers? All the ones that I have seen listed on getmarried.com or theknot.com have all been too expensive for my taste. I tried craigslist.com and found it a little harder to find something in my area and someone that I could trust. Where did you all find your photographer? And if you had engagement pictures done did you use your wedding photographer?

Although it should be an easy decision, we are having a hard time figuring out all the members of our wedding party including the flower girl and ring bearer.

We came up with 5 members relatively easy, in fact I knew of those 5 well before I even got engaged. I noticed there was going to be a problem though when I suggested finding another of each so there were 6 for each side. See I have a little OCD and I hate odd numbers and need everything to be symmetrical.  I know its a little unreasonable to worry about that, but it does indeed bother me ALOT. So I suggested a 6th couple and my fiance shot it down very quickly because the guy is my best friend and he doesnt like him very much.

Then we talked about instead of the guy being my best friend it being his cousin who is currently only 11 but I thought if he was the only young one it would look weird, so I considered the 6th couple being junior bridesmaids/groomsmen.

 So I have a choice of my cousin for the jrbm who is currently only 6 (the wedding is almost 2 years away) but I thought that was kinda young. There is also a family friend whose two daughters I am  close with but can I pick one over the other? The youngest I am a little closer with and she falls at a perfect age range for the jr groomsman but i dont know if I can pick the one sister over the other sister when they are only 2 years apart themselves

Now for the flower girl and ring bearer: The ring bearer is going to be one of my BM son but he will only be 20 months at that point. As for the flower girl I am thinking of using my other friends daughter who will be almost 6 at the time. Can I ask my friends daughter to be in the wedding without my friend being in it? Then I thought of having my friend be a part of the flower girl and ring bearer walking down the aisle but not sure how to work that out

Wow I thought this was going to be the easy part!

I finally got the amazing proposal i was waiting for ! It all happened the day after i returned from a vacation to WV where I was there when my best friend had her baby. He cooked an amazing meal and for the first time in the year that we have been living in our apartment, we sat at our kitchen table, not only that but the tv was off (and i even put on the phillies game for him!) and lit two candles. after dinner he took out the box and opened it and put it on the table, I was in shock and he was nervous .. it would seem to everyone else to be a pretty bad proposal, but it was perfect for us.

Two days later my mom and dad renewed their wedding vows for their 25th anniversary. It was a great time to announce to everyone our engagement, and everything went well. it was possibly the best weekend I have ever had.

now time to start planning !