Wedding Planning Sundries

So we have been wedding planning for the past few months, but I never manage to blog about it.  Figure I would get you up to speed on where we are in the process.  (Albeit I have to omit some of the cooler elements, else I start spoiling surprises!)

We have a cutie location all picked out called Creekside Pavillion.  It is indoor/outdoor, so hopefully the weather will cooperate.   On the January day we visited it, the weather was perfection, so here's hoping it is like that next Jan. The outdoor area is real adorable, and is adorned with lots of twinkle lights at night.

The indoor area is well lit and has tons of windows and feels really open and happy. 

They do all the catering on site, and we think it will be delicious!  Plus they provide everything, but will let us BYOB, so it is quite the deal.  Love this place!

We took some engagement photos, and although this sitting was just for funsies, they came out really nice!  I mean, Alecia did have to take something like 600 photos to achieve this, but hey, it was worth it!  Ha.  Lesson learned:  make sure you hire an awesome photographer for your wedding!  Now we have to decide whether we want another more formal (read: less sweaty) sitting, or if we want to make a video that sort of interviews us about our love.  We might annoy everyone (including ourselves) if said video turns out too precious, but it might turn out cool.  Vote in the comments!

Now to the fun part.  I chose some navy blue bridesmaid dresses at a bridal shop, but then the other day I was randomly shopping on Overstock.com and came across really pretty dresses at literally 1/3 the price of the other ones.  So I called up all the bridesmaids, and got them ordered in the same day.  I love bargains!  Plus the blue is exactly my favorite color (Violet-Blue for all you old-school Crayola fans...remember how Blue-Violet just wasn't as pretty as Violet-Blue?  Oh Crayola, how I miss the simplicity of the classic colors!).  So, yeah, I am extremely excited about the dresses!

I can't wait to see them in real life so I can start planning color schemes and whatnot.  Seriously, I thought I would hate doing all the girlie color/flower/lame stuff selections, but once you start researching, you start getting really into it.

I can't talk about my dress in this forum, as it is public (read: Aneil will look at it) so believe me when I say it is lovely.  I managed to buy it off the rack at half the price, so I stayed close to my budget, but feel like I got much better quality than I could have afforded at full price.  Brides of the world, buy off the rack!  It was sort of nerve-wracking to have to rush to the store to make sure they didn't sell it out from under me, but it was worth it.  I stare at it sometimes.  Also I MAY have tried it on for funsies a couple of times while no one was home.  It's fine.  If you're dying to see a picture, let me know and I will email you one.

I bought some cute flats to wear with my dress.  Mom told me to get heels, but Maria and Bree recommended the flats, and I'm thinking that's the way to go.  I just don't think I could handle heels all day.  These were on sale at DSW (bargains!  yay!), and even have a lil something blue included in the insoles, so I am happy.  Here they are being shown off by my Webkinz friend, Peter.

We are in the process of creating really cool favors and seating chart schemes (we are freakish planners, of course we have a seating chart!) but Aneil has made me swear not to reveal our secrets.  They will be awesome and totally us, so prepare yourselves for charm galore!

I still need a florist.  Alecia says she can sneak me into the June Bridal Expo (I will probably help out her booth as needed) so I can meet some flower people.  I found this bouquet photo on The Knot and now I am obsessed with having irises in January.  I hope I can make this happen.

Okay, that's all for now.  We have a cake tasting on Monday, and I'm really excited about the cake lady, so hope it tastes as good as it looks.  Wish us luck!

In the meantime, hearts and stars, and have a great weekend!   I will be back to non-wedding topics in my next post!

Sing it loud so I can hear you

So, as previously posted, Maria & Casey got married on May 23rd.  There was a lot of pre-wedding preparation and craziness beforehand, but it all fell into place and was fun and lovely.

Last minute prep, as Liz & Thomas scan photos for the slideshow.

And we transport the flowers to the hotel.

And Amee does Maria's hair for the rehearsal.  I like how Thomas got roped into helping with Maria's hair.

Later at the church, Aneil got some blurry pics of our practice walks.

Rehearsal dinner was delicious!  Steaks and salads and tarts, oh my!  Seriously, Cafe Eccell's strawberry tart is a thing of beauty.  Sorry in advance to anyone in my wedding party, as we cannot afford to provide you with a steak dinner.

Then on the big day,  I gave my digital camera to Aneil so all my preparation pics are on my Kodak Funsaver.  I will have to get them developed and get back to you.  We'll see how those turned out.  Thomas kept calling it my "old-timey" camera.

Here's the ceremony:

Seriously, Maria's nieces and nephew are the cutest kids around.

Liza & Julian.  Check out the look on the old lady's face to the left!

Liz & Brian.

Me & Matt.  My mom worries that I will be making this "silly" face throughout my own wedding.

Amee & V.  Amee looks real princess-y in Indian clothes.

Neha & Sean.

Bree & Travis.

The Bride!

And the newlyweds!

The reception was a 2-parter.  There was a lunch reception, with a full buffet, the couple's first dance, and the cake cutting, etc.  The highlight for me was Julian's charming best man speech, which included a lengthy discussion of the movie "Heat."  

We thought the 2 babies on the right looked like miniature versions of Maria and Casey.  Also, that's Leela on the left.  She is Maria's niece, and a dancing fool!  I love her so.

Best friend photos were mandatory.

Maria changed into a gorgeous sari, for what seemed like all of 2 minutes, then the reception was over!

We showered and changed and relaxed before the nighttime reception/dance party.  Aneil, Amee, and I went to the Freebird's on Northgate and it was extremely nostalgic.  Gig them!  Needless to say, we did not eat many hors d'oeuvres at the reception.

Dance party was awesome.  Started out as a baby dance off.

Lily won the dance-off, mostly because she did a crazy pull-up-the-skirt move.  Here she is in action.

Thomas actually did a dance very reminiscent of my brother's patented "squat and stick out your tongue" dance, prominently featured in our infamous dance-a-thon home video, circa 1986.  Apparently the classics never die.  Thomas just does it with more style.

Thomas won over all the ladies, including Neha.

The night eventually devolved into this (of course):

Our faces are nuts here.

Check out the color coordination!  Also, I am madly in love with Maria's dress.

We took Amee to Northgate for all of 1 hour, and all of her Aggieness apparently was reawakened.  She did the darling Shiner Tattoo move at least twice (that I remember).

I love how serene Aneil looks, as he is oblivious to Julian's shenanigans.

I feel like this photo sums up Maria and Amee's relationship.

At times we were cute.

Other times, not so much.

These two were cute entire day.  Lub.

Eventually we were drunk and emotional and gave the couple a mini send-off.  Note Julian's single tear.  Bye bye friends!

I continued crying for a good solid half hour (Aneil says it was an hour) after we got back to the hotel room.  I will miss my Maria and our constant hanging out over the last few years.  I know I already moved to Austin a couple of months ago, but after the wedding it really did feel like the end of an era.  The end of our single days of studying and shopping and missing boyfriends and chatting for hours.  New York is awful far away, but we've got to visit sooner rather than later!

Check out a million more photos at my shutterfly site.  It was a labor of love to upload those, so enjoy them or else!  

PICTURES!

Maria & Casey!

Just Married!



True Love.



More to come.

xoxo

M-A-L-F-E-A-S-A-N-C-E

Quick post before I head to Colsta.

I am 9 kinds of sore from the "Everlast Shadow Box" class yesterday.  I woke up making sad sounds and basically couldn't flip over in bed.  Plus I had to suffer the indignity of watching myself punch the air in 360 degrees of floor to ceiling mirrors.  I am no Rocky.  Aneil says the soreness is good because that means "it's working" but whatevs.   I am pathetic.  I hurt and no one was even punching me back!

Also, we heard about the Austin Chronicle Adult Spelling Bee from our friend Logan, and decided to check it out.  It's an annual event to raise money for the library.  Turns out there are some hardcore spellers living in Austin!  There was this one guy named Geoff, who was trying to intimidate people by wearing his National Scrabble Championship t-shirt.  And apparently he's won the Spelling Bee 3 times before!  It's fine.  We were way out of our league.

There were about 300 people to begin with, and we had to take little spelling tests where we identified the misspelled words.  Words like bellwether, pastime, liaison, etc.  Along with 48 others, I made it to test 2!  Then we got words like pulchritudinous, scleroderma, oeuvre, etc.  And along with 21 others I made it to the stage and the actual spell-out-loud bee!

I was really nervous.  And of course I messed up my very first word, MALFEASANCE.  Not particularly difficult, but after "M-A-L" I pretty much blanked.  Ha.  Oh well, Aneil got an exceptionally blurry photo of my making my be debut.

Look how scared I was!

Yet, excited (the beer probably didn't help my chances)!

I feel like the blurriness here really represents my state of mind in the moment.  Honest to God, I could not spell my name at that point.

It turns out I was way out of my league anyway.  Before we started there was a debate amongst contestants about which established set off bee rules we should follow.  And it turns out the Scrabble champion guy could deliver the goods, spelling ONOMATOPOEICALLY and some other weird word correctly for his 4th win.  Dude was amazing.

Seriously, this guy was a spelling machine!

All in all, a strangely fun night with a quirky word-loving subset of the Austin population.  Reminded me of the movie "Wordplay" which you should all check out if you can.  It's about the national crossword championship and it features all sorts of celebs and crossword lovers talking about crosswords.  Amazingly entertaining.

Anywho, peace out and enjoy the long weekend!

This week I love:  word nerds, salads from Wendy's, and imminent friend reunion.  This week I hate: VCRs, the SAT essay section, and the way I look punching the air.

Blog Makeover

Okay, so the blog needed a little TLC, so check out the new template and updated links!  

New photos are definitely on the way.  I've figured out how to get photos onto the Mac, so expect some Maria wedding pics soon.

Anyone catch the American Idol finale?  Did you record it in any format that can be transferred to yours truly?  My previous post about surviving without cable should be edited to say that I am not faring as well without Tivo.  We have a VCR (that's what pre-dated the DVR, for all you kids out there) and I set it to record my beloved Idol finale so I could go practice for my SAT tutoring interview (I have to teach a class...scary.).  Well, Aneil got home before me, and found that the VCR ate the tape (it did this to another tape last week, but we wrote it off as a fluke).  Luckily he was able to record the last 15 minutes for me, but apparently I missed appearances by Cyndi Lauper and Lionel Ritchie!  Nooooo!  Weirdly, reality show full episodes don't really show up online the way normal tv shows do (anyone want to school me on copyright laws for reality tv?) so I caught a little bit of grainy footage on youtube, but it's NOT THE SAME.  I am one sad pop- culture-deprived-bunny.  I feel like newly crowned American Idol Kris Allen's face really expresses my disbelief that I missed out on  most of the extravaganza:

Apparently this is what I missed:

KISS!  Cyndi!  The dude married to Nicole Kidman!  And...Jason Mraz?  Meh.

Anyway, it's fine.  The entertainment blogs have freakishly detailed descriptions of everything that went down, so it's almost like I was in the Nokia theater myself.  Almost.

On that note, I strangely love TV watcher blogs, so next season I'm going to add a TV Watch feature to my own blog!  Vote in the comments for what show you would like me to recap.  Here's what I watch regularly:  Lost, American Idol, Gossip Girl, and Mad Men.  I used to have a ton of cable reality shows on that list, but the one benefit of my no-cable lifestyle is that I have managed to drop them off my radar (goodbye Real Housewives!  nice knowing ya!)...so yeah, vote below.  Also suggest stuff I may have left off the list that you know I secretly watch anyway (The Bachelor comes to mind).  I am thinking of adding Glee to my repertoire as well.  (Have you seen it yet?  Love!).

The great Atlas Shrugged attempt 2009 has commenced.  This year is interesting because while babbling on about how I will never know who John Galt is, Aneil mentioned that his BFF John's middle name is Galt.  Dude is freaking named after John Galt!  (btw Aneil had no idea that this had any literary significance.)  At any rate, I am only 100 pages in, thus still shy of last year's record 151 pages.  We'll see how it goes this time around.  Oh how I love reading about railroads!

Job prospects not great, but hopefully this SAT teaching gig will work out okay.  I have what is basically a teaching audition on Tuesday, so wish me luck!  Would I be a good teacher, or as Aneil suspects, will I sort of hate high school students?  Discuss!

Anywho, I am off to a workout class intimidatingly titled "Everlast Shadow Boxing".  Scary.  I do this in honor of the fact that I am missing out on this weekend's Master Pancake: Rocky IV edition.  It will probably be worth it to see my lovely brown friend get hitched.

 In the meantime, keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars!

2 Months Without Cable Hasn't Killed Me Yet

Austin has been kind to me for the past couple of months...here's the latest:

The job "search" has gotten depressing.  There is a slim chance I could get a pitiful full time job, doing budgeting for government projects, or inspecting pipelines, or something like that, none of which sound appealing, so it's looking like I need a career makeover.

In the meantime, I am training to be an SAT prep course instructor.  Which means I have to take the SAT again (not officially, but my score will determine whether I get hired)!  I mentioned this in casual conversation at a bar the other night, and this girl at our table looked at me like I was either a) the most haggard-looking 16 year old she had ever seen, else b) some sort of diabolical genius that managed to earn an engineering degree without ever taking college admission exams.  Oy.  At any rate, the next 2 weeks will include lots of critical reading and geometry.  On the plus side, they pay really well (albeit at part time hours), and if I like it, hey, maybe I will become a bona fide teacher after all!  

Aneil still rocks.  He is fun and we play lots of Scrabble and chit chat and watch movies starring Cher.  It rules.  I cook him dinners and he dotes on me a lot, and he doesn't mind that sometimes I eat stinky foods or dote on the webkinz to a ridiculous degree.  We need more space than this tiny apartment, so we are looking at houses soon (hopefully starting tomorrow!).  I have no idea how to buy a house, but hopefully it will all work out.  Then we can have barbecues and get a dining table and all will be right with the world.

Wedding planning is moving right along.  I still need a cake and flowers.  Otherwise we've got a place, food, musicians, engagement pics, plus I have a dress.  We are well on our way, I think.

So I joined the 24 Hour Fitness and actually manage to go about 4 days per week (which is pretty impressive for me).  The main draw is that most of the time at least one of the tv's is tuned to "Golden Girls" and I need my fix, since Lifetime and WE don't beam into our digital converter antenna box.  Also sometimes VH1 Classic is on the tv near the ellipticals.  And on Sundays you can bet that you'll see Bravo's Law & Order: CI on at least 2 tv's!  This place is cable tv heaven!  Aneil says I can't just do cardio all the time (although that's the only way to watch tv) so he went with me on Saturday to act as my very own personal trainer in the weight room area.  

In pop culture news, every TV show is in finale mode.  Here are the ones I care about:

1) Hopefully the Gossip Girl spin-off about 1980's era Lily Rhodes will get picked up.  The quasi-pilot was adorable, and included Andrew McCarthy as the dad, and Libby from "Lost" as the mom, plus lots of Veronica Mars alums.  With a fun soundtrack and lots of neon.

2) What's up with "Lost"?  Honestly I can't even tell if I enjoy it anymore, but I have a compulsive need to watch.  Jack is extra-annoying this season.  So is Locke.  I am weirdly fond a Miles, the ghost whisperer guy.  That's about it.  Allegedly this week we find out about "The Incident".  I hope it puts us back in a normal timeline.

3) I have little to no interest in who wins Idol this year.  Sad!

Otherwise, lately I love:  new Andrew Bird , new Bird and the Bee.  

Star Trek (joy!) >>> Wolverine (blah!).    

I want to include more photos, but it is cumbersome (read: I dunno how to) with Aneil's computer, so I'll save that for next time.

XOXO,

Shells