Gathering our peeps!

One of the things that's really important to both Boy and I are our friends. We are lucky to share an awesome group of friends gathered through high school, college, and our current lives. So when we were building our wedding party... it was a little bit of a challenge.

While we knew full well that the question is really "who do we include" it felt so much more like "who do we exclude." And that made both of us squidgy and upset. There were a couple of shoe-ins for both of us: brothers and sister, our married friends (now in two sets! Congrats again!!); there were also those single and mostly male awesome friends who are all equally important to us.

Our solution? Gigantor wedding party. That's how we roll.

We played around with how it would work, and finally settled on this arrangement. I like it. It rocks.

Once our peeps were in place, we wanted a way for everyone to bond. Since we have what feels like an uber-long engagement (I just want to do this ish already!), we really felt like we had time to plan lots of events and space things out. While I met with most of my bridesmaids for lunch a few months ago, our bridal party social will be our first big event!

I'm so stoked!

It'll be half college party style with contests and prizes. We are soooo lucky to have awesome bridesmaids, groomsmen, and ninjas (ushers) who are willing to gather and play games with us!

The next day, we'll be heading over to my parents' house (about half an hour from our place) and gathering for a lunch on the patio with key family members like my parents, Boy's parents, and our grandparents. While neither Boy and I are fans of formal engagement parties (for us, I'm sure yours was awesome if you had one!) we still wanted all of our "people" to meet and know each other. There will be food, fun, and lots of meeting.

Which means.... planning. Time to get the boxes together for the games, make up nametags, craft prizes and favors (maybe)....

Picking up

Never fear, loyal readers- more fun times are ahead!

I have some serious crafting in my near future, setting up placecards for my Nana and PopPop's fiftieth anniversary partay. Not to mention a swanky get-together for our bridesmaids, groomsmen, and ninjas to all meet and greet one another.

Ahhhhnnnnd we're going to (finally) get things ironed out with our venue, as our one year mark nears ever closer.

God help us.

So excited

Today I'm beyond stoked for many reasons, but the most important of which is that my good friend and bridesmaid Mon is marrying her sweetheart, my other good friend and usher Josh... this frickin weekend!

I cannot begin to wish them all of the awesomeness that they deserve, so I'll just settle for a "squee!" and leave it at that!

I can't believe I forgot!

For some reason, I have an affinity for the movie Brother Bear. I know. I'm not Canadian, I'm not even really fond of bears, but this movie has a very special place in my heart.

I think it has to do with when I first watched it, at home with a college friend, my mom, and my sister. This simple night marked a really important shift in my relationship with my sister and the way I saw how I fit in with my friends. Whenever I see the movie or hear Phil Collins' music from it, I'm taken right back to that night, that summer, and the choices that I made that ultimately created the person I am today.

So how I could possibly leave out this song? I play it every year on the way down the shore to spend time in the sun with my family and friends, and it sets these roots to music for me. I'm not sure where or how, but I'll find it a home for the wedding.

On My Way - Phil Collins

Sure, it's not a love song. It has little to do with Boy, and lot to do with me. But it's about family and joining everyone together. More than anything, that's what I want our wedding to be about!

What personal mantra songs do you have?

Getting it started

Since we have our "Engagement lunch" coming up and we're in a bit of a lull, now is the perfect time for us to get our wedding website up and running!

We will need all of this to be working by the time the STDs are sent out, and that will be early.

So today, instead of focusing on more important things, Boy and I gchatted back and forth about different wedding website services. While our recently married friends did a great job building their website from scratch (and offered to help) we decided against it in favor of one of the free sites. After some searching, we settled on mywedding.com.

The parent site has numerous "wedding planning" features, none of which I've tried out. They all seem helpful though. What we focused on were cost and length of availability. I was surprised to find out today that many of the wedding website hosts limit the amount of time your website is live. While that won't be much of a problem after the wedding, Boy and I have a long engagement. So the 1 year limit that was placed on most sites wasn't going to fly for us. Luckily for us, mywedding is free and unlimited. Yay!

Most of their themes are pretty generic and bland, and there aren't exact matches for our colors, but I'm not stressed about it. We're busy loading the site up with information, but you can see it as a work in progress right here!

One of the most important things

Boy and I met for the first time at a concert, though neither of us remembers it. Our usher, Ry, introduced us at the end of a TSL/Yellowcard show when we were all tired from moshing (or fending off moshers by throwing elbows) all night.

I knew that we had something special when Boy was driving me back to school an told me that I had to hear this "awesome" song. When he put it on, I smiled. It was my favorite song. (awww... gag) Now a piano arrangement of it will play as our processional.

Konstantine - Something Corporate

Not to long ago, this is what I wanted for a processional. Now I think that it'll be used at some point in the ceremony, maybe an instrumental version for the ring warming.

The Luckiest - Ben Folds

You long-time readers know I love this song, and I think the recessional would be the perfect time to use it!

Hallelujah - Paramore

Our first dance song is by a band called Say Anything. We first saw the lead singer playing acoustic and solo while the band was on hiatus. It was awesome. When we first started thinking about first dance song, Boy knew he wanted a waltz. This fit perfectly.

I Want to Know Your Plans - Say Anything

I've featured this song before, it was one of his contenders for our first dance. It's a waltz as well!

Salty Eyes - The Matches

I know it's odd, but as an English teacher, I have a soft spot for Schoolhouse Rock! I have all of them on a dvd, and when I re-listened to this song, I heard lyrics that perfectly describe our wedding party: "We found them, and they found us, and now they are ours. And we're so happy!" At the very least, those words will be my (and now your) geeky little secret as they adorn the part of our programs which will introduce our awesome attendants.

pronouns -

One of my favorite parts of wedding receptions is the campy all-married dance. You know, when the dance floor is crowded by all of the wedded couples and each couple stops dancing and leaves the floor one by one until only the couple who has been married the longest is left dancing. This tears me up every time, so I definitely want it to be a part of our reception.

I was thinking that I would use this great Coldplay track:

(Hidden track: Til Kingdom Come) - Coldplay

But as we watched the Scrubs season (series??) finale this week, I was reminded of how much I love this version of "Book of Love." It might be perfect, and far less obscure.

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

Our love of music is one of the first things that brought Boy and I closer together. What songs did/will you use in your wedding?

Holding pattern

May is going to drag on....

It seems like everything awesome is happening at the end of the month!

And in the meantime, we're stuck in a pattern of nothing we can really do right now. Our venue is booked, but we've been told repeatedly that (especially in this economy) it's unwise to book any vendors more than 1 year out. So we're stalling. Venue will call in June to schedule tastings and have us meet with our (free and provided for us) planner.

But what the heck am I supposed to do until then?

Sigh...