A New Transition

I've spent the last month or so trying to figure out what to do with this blog. Officially, the transition I started writing the blog about is complete and we've now moved onto a new one. I'd have to say our first transition was pretty successful. We managed to eliminate the remaining 700ish miles between us at the beginning of August and went from being separated by half the country to sharing a bed every night. Not that there haven't been plenty of bumps along the way-Dan didn't have a job when we signed the lease which was one of the scariest things I've ever done; the chore chart was doomed from the moment I hung it on the refrigerator; we've discovered annoying habits about each other like how particular Dan is about the way to hang toilet paper/paper towel rolls and my tendency to have up to 5 pairs of shoes lined up next to the bed instead of in the closet; I had more than one fit over not being engaged, and Dan put up with 2+ hour commutes on more than one occasion after working a 10-hour day just to live where I want to. 

Despite all of the craziness, we've learned so much about each other from living together for the past 11 months and I'm incredibly grateful that we made the leap. And, although I may or may not ever admit this to Dan, I lucked out with him not proposing soon enough to have my dream September 7th, 2013 wedding date seeing as my work project go-live is probably getting pushed back to September 9th...sometimes fate works out in our favor!

Now, the real fun begins! I attempted to take some time to enjoy the fact that we were [finally] engaged, but that probably only lasted about 3 days before I started cracking down more on wedding planning. Well, actually, I made my mom buy wedding magazines the day after Dan proposed so I can't really claim I waited that long but still, I tried. So we had the really fun conversation aka the budget talk with my parents just a few days later, which led into the next logical conversation-guest list!! Apparently my dad thought I was crazy as he just asked a fellow Ascension mom today if her daughter had requested a guest list within a week of the proposal. Anyways, guest list is what drives the expense and good thing we addressed it early on since my mom listed 64 people she wanted to invite to my 200 person wedding. And no, that did not include her or my siblings. So much for that suggested 20 people per parent limit....

As soon as I got that news, I knew I'd desperately need some saner people to help me get through the next year. First wedding DIY: bridesmaid ask gifts! After some thorough research (aka time spent on pinterest), I determined exactly how I wanted to ask them-as shown in pictures at the bottom! I got inspiration from a number of blogs and pins-for reference feel free to check my bridesmaids board, they're all on there!

Since half of my bridesmaids live out of state, they got their presents in some ugly boxes and I'm sure my attempt at wrapping everything nicely inside didn't make it during the trip to Nashville, Hilton Head, and Arlington. Sorry ladies! I also had to alter the margarita pouch/margarita glass for my sister since she's only 15 so she got her favorite Arizona Iced tea an some random yellow cup. Yes, I did attempt to match the scrapbook paper on the outside of the bags to the cup to the margaritas. My favorite part of the ask gifts though were the shirts. You can order these online for somewhere between $15-20 but I absolutely hate paying for shipping and I wanted them like now, so I decided to make them! It required trips to 2 different Michael's stores to purchase all the glittery letters they had (sorry to any other Chicago crafters who wanted iron-on silver glitter letters). Piper also found a new source of amusement through knocking the letters off the counter as I was trying to iron them on, I just found a B underneath our oven when I was cleaning yesterday. Its probably the B for my Bride tank top that I'm going to try to convince Allison-my amazing MOH-to make for me :)The backs of the shirts have the year I met each bridesmaid, which only Allison and Elizabeth guessed when the first saw them-good job :) Totally photo op for bachelorette party/wedding morning prep! I also wrote a note to everyone to include in the package. Half the group laughed and the other half cried when reading them, which is good because I'll definitely be needing some company to cry with me and make me laugh throughout this year and on the big day!

Anyways, clearly I'm really excited about the bridesmaid presents and procrastinating doing other things like working on my personal and my wedding budget now that we've got the prices for the church. So I'll leave you all with some pictures! And a warning-this will probably turn into a wedding progress blog so I would love to have you along for this next transition but I understand if its not your thing-thanks for reading!!