Cake Decorating

I signed myself up for cake decorating classes today!! They don't start til October 12 but I'm super duper excited :) Thought it would be nice to get out of the house at least one night a week. The class is four weeks and then there are 2 others that you can take after the basics! Here's hoping it comes easy to me!!

Save the Dates!

Since we tackled the photographer, we are moving onto Save The Dates!!

I found some inspiration online and designed one for us! We are ordering some samples and then will place a real order :) We will definitely have to hold onto them for a while but I'm super excited to see the samples and how they turn out! I'll have to try to keep them a secret until we send them out!!

This also means we will have to buckle down on the guestlist and finish getting that in order :\ I think that will be one of the most challenging parts of the planning process. How are you supposed to decide where to cut off the list?! Wish we could invite everyone and anyone but unfortunately, we will have to narrow it down.

Bowling Pics? Yes Please :)

Had some more pictures taken and decided since we both love to bowl and usually end up there for anniversary date nights that it would be the perfect place to take them! :)

More Photog Options

We met with two more photographers last Monday :)

The two we met with are both Austin based. One was a photography company. They have several photographers and we'd be matched with one. They have beautiful photos but we don't think they were very personable and for the money, we could get more somewhere else. The second photographer was a team of bride-to-be and fiancé. We really liked her and her photos are pretty good. We are leaning towards her right now but have at least one more appointment in July :)

Wedding Photographer Option #1

We had a meeting with a photographer today!

It always makes me a little nervous to go meet with wedding vendors, maybe because I want to like them all so bad and don't want to be disappointed. I told Jesse before we got to our meeting that I was nervous and hoped it went well. It did!! 

She was very nice and we loved her personality. She seemed very interested in us as a couple and we felt like she would be wonderful to work with; after all, the photographer will be with us the majority of the day and will be following us around. She is young and fun and seemed like she was genuinely interested in whatever kind of shots we would want. She said she does all kinds of shots from traditional posey shots to fun, creative, detail shots. We looked online and like her photos pretty well. She has offered us a good deal if we decide to book with her that would include an engagement session, bridal portraits, and full day wedding coverage. We would also get all of the rights and CD's with the photos to print them wherever we want.

We are still going to meet with a few others before deciding but she is definitely going to be hard to beat!

Jesse's Masterpiece!

After we booked Texas Old Town, we were emailed a floor plan with measurements for the space, tables, etc. Dad came up with the idea to create a larger model of the space so we could move the tables around and make it look how we want.

Yesterday Jesse and I went and bought index cards, a magnetic dry erase board, and a roll of magnets to make one! Jesse used his math skills to make it to scale. He drew out the space and then made little tables for me to cut out and put magnets on. Now we have an AWESOME mock-up of the venue hall and it's all thanks to my whiz of a man, Jesse Austin!!

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!!

WE HAVE A WEDDING DATE :)

We went today to take a second look at Texas Old Town and signed a contract! We will be having our ceremony and reception (with dinner and dancing) on FEBRUARY 22, 2013! 642 days to go :) In 21 months I will marry my best friend!!


Ceremony site :)

Reception area! This picture just does not do it justice!

Our names will be on this sign :)











We had an amazing day! On the way home, we stopped at a nursery and found this guy! He is our color inspiration and it was too cool that we stumbled upon him the day we booked our venue!

Venue Tour #2

We went to tour a second venue today! Boulder Springs in New Braunfels. It was absolutely beautiful! It is very similar to venue #1 except that it has a rock-wood combo going on whereas the first was just wood. It also just has one ceremony & reception site because it is a newer place.

After talking things over with Jesse, we decided Texas Old Town was still number one on our list. Both are so beautiful but Texas Old Town has more of a rustic feel. It just felt right there. As soon as we pulled up to the place, I said "Jesse, I want to get married here." At Boulder Springs, it was more a reaction of "it's pretty but not THE place." We are hoping to go look at one other place in Boerne in the next week before we decide for sure but Texas Old Town is the venue to beat!!

Greatest Fiancé Ever!

Jesse is so wonderful! We finally got to celebrate our 1 year engagement anniversary Monday :)

We went to eat and then went bowling! Don't ask Jesse who won ;)

Yesterday I came home from work to flowers and Jesse had folded the laundry!

What a fantastic guy I get to marry!!

Wedding Party :)

Woohoo! We have decided on a wedding party! We talked a lot about who we would like to be in our wedding party and finally made the tough decision! We would of course love to have so many people stand up with us on our wedding day, but then who would sit in the audience? lol It was a bit of a difficult decision trying to decide how big we wanted the party and who it would consist of. It is certainly not as easy of a choice as what flavor the cake should be!

So here it is.... our wedding party!!

Maid Of Honor: Allison Kelley
Allison and I have been friends since elementary school. We have spent many a wonderful memory together: taking uor Cabbage Patch Kids to Burger King, sitting in the ditch talking the night away, too many ferris wheel rides to count at the fair...

Bridesmaid: Tiffany Miller
Tiffany "Momma" Miller and I have been friends since high school. We played volleyball together, went to college together, lived together, and she has helped me through some of the most difficult times in my life.

Best Man: Matt Cueva
Jesse and Matt have been friends for years. They usually spend their time playing poker or football.

Groomsman: Asa Staven
Jesse and Asa have been friends since high school. Asa currently goes to school in Montana so the boys keep in touch via Xbox360 games.

And there you have it! It is a smaller wedding party but we like it!!

One more thing to check off the list :) We will be touring a couple more venues and making that decision in May hoepfully once Jesse has finished school for the semester!

Rustic on the Brain

All I can think about these days is rustic rustic rustic!

We haven't done much in the planning department since our visit to venue number 1 but we are planning a couple more visits in the upcoming weeks. Hopefully, by May, we may have a venue booked!!

In other rustic news, I found this mason jar stamp and just had to have it lol. I have no idea what we need it for but we'll find something :)

Let the wedding planning begin!

We have officially begun the wedding planning process!! I am so excited!

We went on our first venue tour this past Saturday and it was phenomenal! I loved it before we even got out of the car! It was a beautiful place. The staff was friendly. It is a family operated place and they seem like they are so willing to work with you. There are very few restrictions and did I mention it is gorgeous?! While walking around, it felt like someone had gone into my thoughts and built exactly what was in there. It SCREAMS rustic!

Mom, Dad, and Nancy went with us and they liked it as well. After Jesse and I had a moment alone, he also disclosed that he liked it too! I think he realized how much I loved it because he said we'd do whatever it takes to make it happen.

We sat down today and figured out a budget. We are going to have to juggle dates (for like the 3rd time) but I think we may be ready to make a decision. I know we should look at other places and we may look at one or two more but I am beyond sold and so is Jesse.

Budgeting was a bit of a challenge and I hope we can stick to it. A few things about budgeting:
1. A spreadsheets class from Schreiner paid off because I was able to create a wedding budget using excel.
2. Wedding budgeting is not as much fun as looking at wedding things online.
3. We WILL stick to the budget :)

I also am about ready to officially declare a wedding party! Jesse and I have discussed who we want and I am too excited to keep it to myself much longer! I've been working on a little project and am finished so it's only a matter of time before I spill the beans! It was a tough decision to make but we finally did it!

I guess that about wraps up the wedding commencement weekend! Now it's time to start spending that budgeted money !!

Decisions Decisions

Jesse and I are trying to get some decisions made here soon!

Most of our conversations revolve around WEDDING DATES!


I'm anxious to set one so we have been discussing options. I think we may have at least picked a general idea for our ideal time frame; getting others on board and finding a venue would be the next step. If we have it our way, we will be getting hitched in early 2013! There's already a venue I have in mind so tours need to be setup! We should hopefully be able to go look at it soon and see if they have a date available for what we want!!

Here's hoping things go the way we want !!

Here's to 4 years!

Jesse and I celebrated our 4 year dating anniversary February 4th :) It has certainly been the most amazing (while at sometimes scary and trying) four years of my life! I think we have both been blessed beyond measure to have met and fallen in love. He is my better half and I would go through ALL of it again (yes even the accident) so long as Jesse was still in my life on the other side. We have definitely grown stronger in our relationship over the course of the last four years. We look forward to many more years together and will soon be celebrating marriage anniversaries :)

We also celebrated Valentine's day this weekend in Kerrville. Jesse gave me a beautiful arrangement of calla lilies and we went to Billy Gene's and had dinner with a gorgeous view of the river! Afterwards we went back to Jesse's apartment and watched Saving Private Ryan per Jesse's request :) It was a wonderful weekend and I hated to see it end but alas, back to school and work we go. I love that we have the kind of relationship that it doesn't matter what we are doing, we are having the times of our lives doing it! Sunday, before I left, we sat and talked for an hour and then napped together, it was the perfect end to a wonderful Valentine's weekend!!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY EVERYONE ! XOXO

Finalized wedding "theme" ???

I think Jesse and I may have nailed down a general "theme" for our wedding!! So excited. I'm not sure how we will pull it off but we have a direction! I can't wait to start getting more ideas and trying to figure out how to make this happen! If it's anything like what's in my head, it will be so freakin' beautiful :) I am one excited bride-to-be!!

"The 5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman

Just finished reading "The 5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman. I recommend it to anyone, no matter the relationship. It was a very easy read and it's a fairly short book.

It focuses on the 5 Love Languages: Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, and Physical Touch. Chapman says everyone has there own love language and finding out your partners (or whoever else in whatever relationship) love language will help keep your "love tank" full. All are important of course, but everyone has a main language that speaks best to them.

We took the quiz to find out our love languages and Jesse and I are both Quality Time. I had close seconds with Receiving Gifts and Words of Affirmation, but Jesse was very much so Quality Time dominant.

Great read for those in a wonderful relationship or those in a troubled one!

Slideshow

Today Jesse and I had the house to ourselves! We spent the morning playing video games together, then we went to Figlio's for a super yummy pizza lunch date followed by a little shopping. Then we came home and football playoff game time commenced. While Jesse watched the game, I started what I hope will be a slideshow we will play at our ceremony!!

I am by no means a video-slideshow tech but I think it's coming along nicely. Windows Movie Maker has made it pretty fool proof. I have a bunch of photos of Jesse and I but need some of our younger years and some of Jesse and his friends. Apparently his friends don't take pictures religiously like me and mine.

Little projects like this keep me wedding-sane since we can't really start planning yet!

Back to School!

Jesse started another semester of college today! Exciting and not so exciting all at the same time :)

Exciting because (1) it's one semester closer to a wedding (2) some said he'd never go back to school and he's proving them wrong one semester at a time! (3) he's one semester closer to achieving his goal of becoming a coach.

Not so exciting because (1) he's got to go back to Kerrville while I'm here in Cibolo (2) he's already decided he has at least one pretty challenging class (3) he got a new (not so wonderful) roommate.

Like last semester and the ones before, we will make it through and Jesse will rock the socks off of his classes :)  Hopefully Jesse will only have 3 (maybe 4) semesters left.



On another note, we are debating opening a savings account. We have been saving money for the wedding and would like somewhere safer to keep it (and somewhere we may collect a little interest). The only problem is we don't know a thing about savings accounts except for the simple (low to no interest rate ones) at our banks. Hoping to get a little insight ASAP but chances are we will just open a plain jane one, but it'll be our first joint account :) :)

Communication, Communication, Communication!

Jesse and I have done a lot, A LOT of traveling over the years being a long distance couple and we have always had a good time roadtripping. When we are not jamming out to my ipod, he and I have had some of our best conversations. We have never had trouble opening up to one another and sharing our thoughts and future plans. Jesse knows some of my deepest, darkest secrets, my fears, my hopes, my dreams, and I know his. Communication is one of the top priorities on our list of relationship musts and I feel like we have an amazing line of communication! To us, this will be a strong building block for our life together.

I had heard of a book called "1001 Question to Ask Before You Get Married" and received it as a Christmas gift from mom and dad. We took it on our most recent trip to visit Momma Bear in Gtown and had a lot of fun answering the questions. Some of it was things we obviously discussed before we made a commitment to each other (i.e. How many kids, where would you like to settle down, do you want pets...) but other questions have really opened up our eyes to how we want our marriage to be and how we don't want it to be (i.e. do you want your marriage to be like your parents, how will you discipline children, what about daycare, jobs, etc.). Jesse and I have been skipping around a little because some of the topics are things we have already beat to death as you would expect when people date and decide to get engaged to ensure compatibility. The book has questions for every topic newlyweds may encounter (in-laws, family, children, pets, friends, finances, personalities...). We are not even close to finishing it, some questions spark long conversations, but have many more trips in our future to work on it!

Though some of the questions are no-brainer, early relationship questions, there are many chapters and many categories of questions that you may not have discussed fully or in depth with one another. There are also some relationship pointers throughout the book. I would highly recommend this book to any engaged couple. It not only opens up the lines of communication and makes you think about your future life together, but we had a lot of fun talking about the life we want to create together!

Happy 2011 !!

It's 2011 :) That means it is one year closer to whenever me and Jesse are getting married!!

We spent New Years at my house with my parents. We all went to eat and then we had a Wii tournament. Of course, I was the WINNER :) Then we watched the fireworks go off in downtown SA on tv at midnight. I got myself my first New Year's kiss from a Fiancé! (We kind of have this thing for calling attention to things we do for the first time as an engaged couple)

After New Years, we roadtripped it to Lubbock for my cousin's wedding. Every wedding we go to (seems like a lot) I get more and more excited for our own wedding. I can hardly contain myself when we are sitting in the pew because in a couple of years we will be the ones at the alter as others look on. Plus I like to get ideas on things I may like to do myself. Like from Leanna's wedding, Jesse and I had talked about slideshows of old pictures of us and she had one (that was great!). Jesse liked it too and so we've decided that we may incorporate a slideshow at the end of our ceremony or during the reception..

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
&
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO AMANDA!