a thunderous tribute

so, i'd have to say for the first time in my life, i did what you're supposed to do for memorial day. i was part of a huge tribute to memorialize those who have given their lives for our country.

yesterday, bryan and i headed up to DC to ride in rolling thunder. if you don't know what this is, somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 motorcycles gather at the pentagon and parade into DC and to the vietnam war memorial wall. the goofy thing about me is, until we left frederick, md with a few thousand motorcycles and passed people waving american flags from overpasses and firemen and policemen saluting us, it hadn't occurred to me that we were doing this for a reason besides being part of a big motorcycle rally. and of course, because i'm an overly emotional girl, i got teary eyed two or three times driving into the city. my future mother-in-law has a sticker on her helmet that says "bikers have big hearts." and they sure do.

we met up with bryan's brother kevin and his daughter katrina, and bryan's mom and dad (hi guys!) in frederick, MD to ride in, and were with them throughout the day. i have to say, the whole experience was one i'm very glad to have had (you have seriously never seen so many motorcycles in your life, and if you've never been there, you can't possibly imagine this many motorcycles in one place), but damn was it hot. and i ain't so hip to the heat. i tried my hardest to not whine, because no one likes a whiny future wife, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law or aunt-in-law, but i think i ended up whining a bit anyway. :) there are so many motorcycles there that even though they start leaving at 12pm, it takes several hours to get all of them out and on their way, which means we got to hang out in the parking lot(s) of the pentagon for those several hours. thankfully i brought lots of snacks (which i ate lots of) and they had ice cream and water. and i finally got a little shade, which helped immensely.

when we finally set off on the parade, i wasn't sure what to expect. what we encountered was pretty cool, considering we were coming through almost 3 hours after it started: tons of people on the streets cheering us on and waving and sticking their hands out for high fives. i must say, i felt a bit like miss america. :) the most moving person we encountered on the route was a marine in full dress standing in salute over a gun and helmet--a symbol of his fallen comrades.

i don't come from a military family, and have never had any desire to be a part of the military, but when i see things like that marine and the korean war memorial and the vietnam war memorial, i'm overwhelmed by this feeling of empathy, of sadness... i don't even quite know how to explain it. all i can think about is how close these guys become when they join the family that is any given branch of the military... the hell they go through in boot camp, the hell they go through in war, and i can't fathom what it must be like to watch your friends, your family really, die right next to you. to know that with a little tiny twist of fate that could have easily been you... to feel a sense of duty, of purpose, yet to feel like you just want to be away from all the pain and horror of war.

and so, i am glad to have been a very, very small part of a memorial day tribute to those who have felt that sense of duty and of purpose and who made the ultimate sacrifice in the hopes of making the world a better place.

on this memorial day, i remember.

officially official

well, i feel like a huge weight has been lifted from my wedding planning shoulders.

we're getting married on brown's island, a popular venue in richmond for outdoor events. through a connection who knows about the island, i learned that the island was "closed" on the day of our wedding, and that renting it for an event costs $7500, but that since it was closed, we could just sort of show up there and get married and no one would care. because we REALLY wanted to get married there, bryan and i decided this was good enough for us.

as time went on, though, and our vendors asked if it was all official that we were using brown's island, i started to get more and more uneasy about just using it without official permission. so i called a contact at the company that rents the place, and asked if she could check to see if since we're just having a short little ceremony there and no big set up if we could find a way to make it official. well, today, she called me back and told me that she has okayed it with the company that owns the island and so all is well!

yahoo! now i don't have to feel like i'm sneaking around and doing something i am not supposed to be doing! :)

for those of you reading this who now think i'm a lunatic for even considering doing such a thing without official permission, do know that it is a public place and there are no fences or patrolmen or anything that keep people away. and there's no way we were paying freaking $7500. obnoxious that is.

i'm extremely glad it's memorial day weekend, and it looks like we are headed up to rolling thunder in DC. this'll be my first time for this event, and while i am a little wary of the prospect of sitting on a motorcycle on hot asphalt in 80+ degree temps, i think it is going to be totally awesome and tons o' fun. i'll try to remember to take pictures! :)

makin' me crazy

do you ever have one of those days where you have about 100 things you want to get done and something happens that delays the completion of every single freaking task?! i feel like that's what today has been like.

i go in these cycles of freaking out and needing to get all these wedding things done and then i get a few done and breathe for a few weeks (ie, do nothing), then freak out all over again. well, if you couldn't tell by my last post, i am currently in the "get everything done" mode. but it seems like everyone i ask for an answer has some reason they can't answer me at the moment that i want the answer! yes, i know the world doesn't revolve around me and that sometimes these things take time. but it's makin' me crazy.

so poor bryan when i get home this evening. because he is one of the worst culprits of not deciding things on my time frame. :) and i REALLY want to make a decision about our honeymoon and the dj situation (bryan wants to go see the guy in action, the company wants us to send in the contract ASAP since our wedding day is a really busy day for weddings). personally, i liked the guy, and so did bryan, so i see no reason we can't just send it in, but i need to convince him of that. the dj company says it's really awkward to go to someone else's wedding to see him in action (well, geez, we're not going to crash the party) and that what if we come at a moment when he's doing something whack that the couple asked him to do (playing the macarena or an otherwise sucky song). bryan says you don't go to a car dealership and buy a car just because the car salesman tells you it drives well and it looks nice. i don't know... i know the company we're going through is the best in town, so i trust from our meeting with him (1.5 hours) and their word that he'll do a good job...

anyway, i'm gettin' a bit crazy over this wedding planning. but once a couple things get squared away, i'll be fine again. :0)

feeling accomplished

this weekend was good... practically bursting at the seams with accomplishments. they might just be personal accomplishments, but they're accomplishments all the same. when you are a girl who loves being a couch potato as much as i do, anytime you're gone more than you're home in a given weekend is good.

accomplishment #1: went to see grandma and dad friday night. considering i usually get home from work and want to veg out and think about heading down to good ol' chester but rarely actually GO there, i was glad i took my little (okay big) butt down there. it's always good to catch up with the fam! even if i did bore both grandma and dad by forcing them to look at websites relating to wedding planning stuff. :)

accomplishment #2: pantry: DONE! well, this is more bryan's accomplishment than mine, but while i was in chester visiting, he was at home putting the finishing touches on our newly expanded pantry. when i got home my cookbooks were in their new little nook and it made me giddy to see stuff going back in there!

accomplishment #3: kitchen back to normal, house (relatively) clean! my mom was thinking about coming down saturday evening (she didn't end up coming), so in a holy-crap-company-can't-see-our-house-like-this frenzy, bryan and i flew around the house saturday morning and made it presentable. the best part of this is that the kitchen is back to normal from the hell hole it had been for months. wish i had taken pictures so you could get the full effect, but, alas, i never remember to take picutres.

accomplishment #4: made it to our friend leslie's college graduation and celebrated with her. our friend leslie graduated with her BA this weekend from VCU, so we went and watched her receive her degree and then headed to bottom's up pizza for a little celebration. i was so excited for her and almost cried because i am so proud. look, i know i'm a dork.

accomplishment #5: caught up on a week's worth of tv. yes, i consider this an accomplishment. while bryan was off playing poker with the guys, i caught up on i think 5 shows i had missed. i like tv, okay? (and by the way, he didn't win the poker tournament. :( )

accomplishment #6: a FULL day of wedding planning!
accomplishment #6a: met with the DJ. yesterday's wedding planning adventures began with the dj. we went through the reception timeline and then got to the fun part where we talked about the music... what we did and didn't want. i requested that he play steve miller band "the joker" at some point in the night and he looked at me like i was crazy, so i gave in and said of course i'd understand if he didn't think that would go so well (i just love that damn song so much). bryan requested AC/DC and Led Zepplin. to my horror, the dj said he could probably get a little AC/DC in there. oh lord. when he asked what we absolutely did NOT want, neither of us had any very strong feelings, but as time went on i said please let's not have the macarena, please let's not have "mambo #5" and please no beegees. i hate the beegees. bryan and i need to figure out our first dance song and such, but i think we'll be in good hands with the DJ we've picked.
accomplishment #6b: selected and registered for china at hecht's. i was worried we'd have a hard time deciding on a china pattern, but we managed to pick it out rather quickly. we were at hecht's for quite a while, though, because picking flatware and glasses and cookware is hard work! and bryan has a serious aversion to, as he put it, "buying things he doesn't need." i tried multiple times to explain to him that HE isn't buying these things, that we are selecting things we would like to have so that people don't buy us random stuff we don't want, but he is just so practical that he never got as registry scanner happy as i would have liked him to be. :)
accomplishment #6c: met with our celebrant and discussed the ceremony. this part was the highlight of the day, and i didn't expect it to be. i had been thinking that a wedding ceremony is a wedding ceremony, same thing pretty much every time (unless you're catholic in which case it's excrutiatingly long). our celebrant took us through a powerpoint presentation about the ceremony that touched on so many things i would have never thought of, plus went through some different versions of a wedding ceremony. so we have a booklet of several selections for each different part and we'll put our own ceremony together from that. people, i was crying a couple different times just thinking of our ceremony and us saying those things to each other and... lord, i am a total girl and i hope everyone sitting anywhere close to us (and especially any members of the wedding party) will have a stash of kleenex ready to pass to me because i am going to be a mess.
accomplishment #6d: registered for some more stuff at target. since we want people to have options, we went to target and registered for stuff, too. again, bryan was very scanner gun shy, so we'll have to go back, but i am glad we at least got the process started. he tells me i can't just go back and put stuff on the registry without him, so we'll see if i can resist that temptation.
accomplishment #6e: made it home, with friendly's ice cream, in time to catch the season finale of desperate housewives.

so today, i feel like i need another weekend day. luckily, next weekend is memorial day, so we'll have that extra day off... can't wait for that! :)

fabulous friday

i am so glad it's friday. this weekend is going to be busy, but i'm glad it's the weekend all the same!

bryan and crew didn't do so great at the softball game wednesday night... but in the first inning bryan had a highlight reel moment when he caught the ball in left field in the tips of his glove and did a somersault and still came up with the ball. then there was that play where he was coming in to home base and demonstrated the perfect slide--totally unneccessarily. :) my theory is he can NOT leave a softball game unless he's covered in red clay dirt, so he's gotta get that slide in there sometime. i think he likes the way it looks sprinkled on the linoleum in our foyer...

tomorrow our friend leslie graduates from college, then bryan is headed off to poker night with da boys. maybe he'll win a lot of money to put towards the honeymoon (that's what he always says he's doing when he plays poker). sunday's wedding planning day. bryan was reminded of this last night while i was on the phone with my mom, and let out a little "whaddya mean wedding planning day?!" "it's on the calendar!" i said. no choice for him... we'll meet with the DJ, then register for wedding gifts, then go meet with the guy that's marrying us. i will be relieved to have those things taken care of so we can move on to the rest of it.

i have been trying to get sick all week, and yet i keep forgetting to take my clarinex. i'm sure it's just allergies, and i paid 35 freaking dollars for the medicine, yet i can't remember to take it. my throat feels like it's about to get sore and my eyes hurt and my head hurts and i'm stuffy--things that haven't gone away for a week--yet those little blue pills (clarinex people, not viagra!) stay in the bottle and i continue to suffer (mildly, yes, but it's still a form of suffering!).

tonight... what to do? leaving work early today to go furniture shopping with a co-worker for one of the doctors, then making a little pit stop at the mall, then maybe i'll head down to ol' chester and see my dad and grandma... so, family, if you're reading this, let me know if you don't plan to be around this evening. :)

i promise to keep this blog neutral and not get into too many political rants, but can i just ask one question? how come our country all of the sudden only has one border? i'm just sayin', if you're going to talk about borders, don't say "THE border." there's more than one.

hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!

it's all coming together...

so, i talked to my future sister-in-law last night and she got her bridesmaid dress, and we chatted about wedding stuff for about an hour. god, it is so weird that i am getting married. i can't say i never thought i would, but now that i am, i am occasionally surprised that i really am tying the knot. and it's crazy that it is happening in, oh... 136 days! talking to kelley i realized for about the hundredth time this week how much we have to do in so little time... i need to get better about scheduling all of it because i am crap for time management, and bryan's definitely no better at it than me. and to his credit, i have this giant to-do list floating around in my head and the only things he knows about are that we need to book the honeymoon and the rehearsal dinner and holy crap there is so much to do.

speaking of the honeymoon, i'm trying to convince bryan that we should go to Turks & Caicos. i thought an all inclusive would be the way to go, but the more i thought about what i want from a honeymoon, the more i thought i'd rather be somewhere less touristy. a friend of mine from the arthritis foundation went to Turks & Caicos and still raves about it being her favorite vacation ever, and she vacations rather frequently. she and her husband even did this thing where a boat took them to a private island for the day, just the two of them there on their own little beach with a picnic basket and some rum punch. now what better outing can you have on your honeymoon? and the place we'd stay is rated #1 on tripadvisor.com, which is nothing but traveler reviews. it's called the royal west indies resort. and it looks fabulous. and the scuba diving in T&C is supposed to be some of the best in the caribbean. there are always other options, but this is the one i'm pushing for at the moment!

several months ago bryan started a project: expanding our pantry. he knocked out a wall (our pantry is under the staircase, which is in the center of the house) and has been working on finishing it since then. his dad came down and did all kinds of work on it one weekend, and now, finally, it almost looks like he's finished! except he is a perfectionist and every time it looks like it's finished, he sees some miniscule little spot that needs to be fixed and extends the project by a few days... i will be so glad when he decides that it is good enough and i can have my pantry and my kitchen back! we are interesting, bryan and i... we're both perfectionists to some degree, only on different ends of the spectrum. bryan will work and work and work until something IS perfect, i will do it the best i can and then stop because i know it will never be perfect and if i don't stop at some point i'll drive myself crazy. sometimes we balance each other out that way, sometimes we end up spending way too much time on a given project, sometimes we drive each other crazy because we either want the other to leave it alone or fix it better. guess that's the way love goes... :)

by the way, it's kind of funny to talk to family (and family-to-be) now because i start to tell them things that have been going on in my life and then they say, "oh yeah, i read that in your blog," and i kind of forget that this is here and people are actually reading it. i need to make sure that i don't tell EVERYTHING here and that i save myself some things to talk about!

weekend in bath county

well, we are back to the grind after our weekend in bath county!

finally got on the road friday evening and stopped in staunton to see my mom for a few minutes before heading up to bath county. bryan had never been past staunton, and he tickled me all weekend with his responses to and questions about bath county. the first one, headed out of staunton, was "when do we get back on the interstate?" no interstates in that part of the state--we stayed on a country route for the next hour and a half 'til we reached our destination: the inn at gristmill square in warm springs.

we had dinner in the restaurant there (after having to make a reservation for half an hour later--who knew you needed reservations to eat in bath county!?), and then headed off to bed to rest up for the big day on saturday: prom day!

after having a lovely continental breakfast of fresh baked muffins and breakfast breads, coffee and OJ delivered to our room and eating it on the couch in the plush white robes provided to us, we got ready to head over the mountain to pick up victoria and zechariah. we made a couple sightseeing stops (the warm springs, lake moomaw) and then found ourselves in good ol' mountain grove.

saturday was a bit of a blur, but after hours at the beauty salon(apparently there is ONE woman in bath county who does prom up-dos, and man does she have some good gossip!) and going to pick up her date (who lives in the middle of nowhere and the best i can tell was the last kid with no date to prom and vic wanted to go so he became her date!), we dropped off victoria at the homestead for prom! bryan and i snuck in and spied on her for a few minutes. felt like a goofball, but we weren't the only ones, and i wanted i can't believe she's going to be 15 this summer, or that zech will be 14 in october! they are growing up so fast. i was glad my mom and i were there to help vic get ready, it was lots of fun to have a girly day, and i think zech and bryan bonded a bit on the tennis court at the gristmill. :)



didn't get to spend much time with zech since it was all about victoria, but did manage to convince him to take a picture with me. every time i see him he has become more and more of a young man, it really freaks me out and makes me feel OLD! and if he gets any more handsome i don't know how we're going to keep the little girls away!




yesterday we made the obligatory drive-by of the bath county pumped storage station (the hydroelectric power station there). bryan couldn't seem to get a good enough view so he took it upon himself to seek out a better angle... i guess since he is a Dominion employee, going "behind the blue sign" is sort of justifiable (he says he was just posing by this fence).







after taking some boring pictures, we headed back to staunton for a mother's day visit with my mom. she broke out some old home movies and baby photos for bryan to see... thankfully he's already been around me long enough to know what a dork i am, so i wasn't at all embarassed by the photos, except maybe a little by the awful feathery hairdo i had circa 1986. oh well. we all had bad hair back then, i guess. :)





it was a great weekend away, and we had some great dinners and spent some great time with family!

happy birthday dad! and damn, we're slow.

happy, happy birthday to my dear old dad! i am sorry to miss it, but hopefully we'll get to spend some fun times together soon!!

it's 2:40 and i wanted to leave by noon. i am actually kind of impressed that we'll probably leave by 3, because i know that we're both incredibly slow at getting moving. well, bryan's really slow. and i am by association. :)

anyway, we did get the grass mowed, my eclipse washed, some laundry done, house cleaned and the satellite radio transferred back to the eclipse this morning/early afternoon, so i guess we're doing good all the same. oh, and we tried to save a bird that was laying in the grass (thankfully bryan didn't run it over), but i think it was on it's last wing... she couldn't move very well. but we kept our fingers crossed that maybe she's a baby and is just getting the feel of being out of the nest. doubtful, but i'm all about optimism!

hope everyone has a great weekend, will update once we're back from our bath county/prom getaway!

wednesday's softball outing

last night was softball night for bryan. i, being the good wife-to-be, always go and root his team on. thankfully this year one of our friends is playing on the team, too, and his wife comes along, so i am not the ONLY person in the stands. it's a pretty good time to watch the guys play, although men and sports will always be beyond my comprehension. don't get me wrong, i enjoy watching, and i'm even a competitive person, but i am mystified by how a bat and ball can bring otherwise calm and collected men together. they go from casual hellos to smacking each other on the behind and calling each other baby! it's fascinating...

anyway, bryan's team kicked some bootie first game out--they won and the game was ended because of the slaughter rule, they were so far ahead of the other team. so you'd think the second game would be similar right? (they play the same team twice in a night.) WRONG! the second time around, the OTHER team won with the slaughter rule! i have no idea what happened to my guys after the first game, but it was really a comedy of errors watching them the second time out... dropping the balls, hitting nothing but fly balls right into the gloves of the outfielders... luckily for me, losing games seems to affect bryan less and less the older he gets. when he first started playing 5 years ago, he would get in a real funk after a loss. now i can tell he's bummed, but he gets over it pretty fast. guess he's mellowing out in his old age. :)

on a tragic note, while at the softball game jodie called me to give me the american idol results since i was missing it. i am devastated to see lovely, bald chris daughtry go home. *sniff* guess i will have to direct my loyalties to elliott yamin now, the hometown boy. the bad thing is i won't have the distinct joy of seeing and hearing chris for the next two weeks, the good thing is that i won't feel guilty for wanting the hot guy to win more than the guy from my hometown. :)

movin' right along

alright, so yesterday talked with the (potential) dj for the reception and we are meeting with him in a couple weeks on the same day we're meeting with our wedding officiant. it will be a day devoted to wedding planning! i might even drag bryan's butt to a formalwear store so we can figure out the whole groom/groomsmen attire thing. today my goal is to get a better, firmer idea of where we're going on our honeymoon. i'd like to get that booked so that as i get more and more stressed about the big day, i can remember that the next day i'll be sitting on X beach in X sunny place sipping X fruity beverage. :)

bryan and i watched that david blaine special on monday night, and i am totally fascinated by that guy. i think he's insane, but man is he interesting to watch. i was convinced he was going to die trying to break the breath hold record, so when bryan suggested we go to bed early and watch it the next night (we have DVR and were recording it), i insisted we watch it because i didn't want to watch the man die after he was already dead! ha! thankfully that wasn't an issue. it never occurred to either of us that he wasn't *actually* holding his breath, but apparently some people think that part was an illusion too? i disagree... i think he does magic and he does stunts, and that was a stunt. a crazy one, but real all the same.

yesterday i had to drive to work because i had a doctor's appointment, and it was interesting after not having driven for a couple weeks. for those of you who don't know, i started taking the bus to work a few weeks ago after realizing how much money it was going to save me (upwards of $200/month) and getting spoiled by napping on the way to work. i had a dermatologist appt yesterday (annual mole check--making sure none of them turn cancerous!), so i was able to sleep in a bit, which was nice, but going back to the whole parking 4 blocks away thing sucked. so today i brought my parking pass with me and i'm cancelling it. i figure i can always sign back up if i decide i want to...

gonna go do a bit of honeymoon research and then get back to work!

black thumb turns green... sort of.

well, my gardening attempts yesterday were at least superficially successful! we shall see how long the flowers live... after spending an hour or so fighting with the weeds in the "bed," i was ready to head to lowe's to get some supplies. bryan was almost done with scuba and on his way home, but i headed up to lowe's solo so that i could buy the hose house that i have been wanting to get but that bryan didn't think we needed. :) (i think he will like having it though... so much better than having the hose just laying there in a bunch of knots.)

so i got some geraniums, some marigolds, some petunias and some impatiens, then i got potting soil. now, i am a question asker, so i probably asked 4 different people different questions about gardening while i was at lowe's. the people i asked about the dirt must not have been too keen on the gardening either, because they told me the potting soil was what i needed, when, in reality, i think it's made more for POTS than the ground. but i think it will work. at least i hope.

also, another lowe's customer consultant told me i could just plant the flowers in THAT dirt (no need to dig down into the ground), so that's what i did, because the earth in our yard is HARD and it would have been a real pain to dig holes deep enough for those suckers! so instead, i put them in the top soil and mounded up the dirt around them. i am hoping that the rain we've gotten since i finished is helping the roots to wind their way into the more stable earth below, and not just washing away my mounds. :)

so, for now, at least one spot in our yard looks perty.

motivate... motivate... motivate...

well, yesterday's trip to the pottery was a success. i didn't find everything i had on my list, but i didn't expect to. and the best part of the pottery is that if i decide not to use the things i bought (i have more than 4 months to find something better), it was all super cheap and i can find other uses for it anyway. good stuff.

that's only the second time i've been to the pottery and i have to say it brings back memories of my nana. i remember her loving to go to the pottery when i was a kid, and never knowing what the magic was that it must hold for her. i miss her, and wish she was here to give some crafty advice on all the do-it-yourself projects i'm taking on!

so. now it's time to motivate. bryan has gone to get recertified for scuba diving so that he can come with me on my open water dives to complete MY certification, and i am determined to be productive while he's gone. i finished a couple more save-the-dates that i didn't have addresses for with the first batch, cleaned up the kitchen a bit (no one ever told me that as a grown woman i was going to have to clean the kitchen EVERY DAY OF MY LIFE!), and folded some laundry. now, i am venturing into the great outdoors, that great wilderness that is our yard.

bryan and i are both crap for yardwork. there always end up being other things that are more important or more interesting to do, and our yard has been neglected every year. the fact that bryan is obnoxiously allergic to grass doesn't help matters, either, because every time he mows the grass he is sick for a week. so anyway, after getting this in writing so that i can't go back on it, i am headed out to attack the areas of ground that supposedly pass for flowerbeds. our builder landscaped these areas with some lame shrubs that either are some midget variety of shrub or whose growth were stunted because of our black thumbs. i'm starting with one of them... gonna dig all of it up (even the 10 tulips i planted two falls ago when i thought i was going to start doing yardwork) and go to lowe's and buy some dirt and some flowers. the only problem is i know NOTHING about gardening. so this oughta be interesting... particularly if i come across any worms, of which i am retardedly afraid. wish me luck.

on a lovey-dovey note, bryan wore one of his arthritis walk t-shirts to his scuba re-cert. every time i see him wear one of those shirts in public, i am giddy. i think most guys would think that t-shirt was cheesy and wouldn't wear it, but not him... whether he knows it or not, the fact that he shows the world he is involved with the fight against this disease just makes me love him even more...

the pottery better be my friend.

well, today i am heading off with my friend tammy to the williamsburg pottery. we made this trip last year and i found quite a few awesome things for the house, but this year, my mission is different. i am going in search of WEDDING SUPPLIES!

now, last year when i went, i wasn't engaged so wedding supplies didn't even cross my mind. but if i am remembering correctly, i'm thinking i should be able to find quite a few things that will satisfy a few of my wedding needs. i need a big glass vase/bowl for the guestbook cards (we're not doing a traditional guestbook, we're doing little notes from each guest that will be put into this bowl, then put into a book). i need some favors... i have no idea what i want for that, though. i need some blue satin for the girls' sashes... perhaps i'll find some things for bridesmaid/groomsman gifts...

yesterday finally called the DJ company back that i think we're going to use, after realizing, thanks to my girls on theknot.com message boards, that they really are going to be my best bet for a DJ in richmond. so i think instead of going with the owner, who is awesome but $500 more expensive than his employees, we're going with this guy who is a DJ on a radio station in charlottesville. gotta talk to him still, but hopefully he'll work and i can cross that off the list!

people have been checking our wedding web page and commenting, it's all becoming so real... but we still have SO MUCH to do... as i write this i see the 3 tabs open with potential honeymoon venues, reminding me we still need to figure that out. i've been thinking we're going all-inclusive, just to make it as relaxing as humanly possible, but yesterday started wondering if perhaps a nice hotel and dining out wouldn't be about the same price and just as fun. this is what happens when i don't make decisions quickly: i start to second-guess myself! unfortunately bryan is the most analytical, slow decision maker i've ever known, so quick decisions don't happen around here too often. :) (thus the 4.5 years of dating before engagement!!)

next weekend my little sister goes to PROM! she's only 14, but she is growing up so fast. bryan and i are headed up to bath county for the weekend to assist in the getting ready process, and also because we never go on weekends away, and even though we're trying to save every penny we have for the wedding, i think we deserve it! it will be fun to stay in one of the bed & breakfasts (yet to be booked) and see ol' bath county from a different perspective.

well, i need to prepare for my trip. hope you'll all enjoy keeping up with me. thanks to cousin cassandra for the blogspot idea to keep everyone updated!