Will You Be My...

We officially have a bridal party, y'all! We are so happy to introduce to everyone our ladies in waiting:

Natali as our Maid of Honor

AND

Savannah and Nicole as our Bridesmaids

Read more about the ladies here!

This past Christmas, these ladies were given a couple special gifts from Judy. As an early Christmas present, each lady received a chunky envelope which sat on top a larger package. The chunky envelope had asked to be opened first:

Inside the envelope, was a sparkly, jingly Christmas tree ornament with their initial on the front. On the other side of the ornament, the beginning of the question had been asked:

Next, the ladies were to open the larger package. Inside were cookies iced with question marks which laid atop a glass plate. (Each lady received a different patterned plate that Judy felt would be suitable to their respective tastes.) The ladies would then remove the cookies, revealing the surprise ending to the ornament's question:

Fortunately, they all said "Yes!" Be sure to check back later to specifically find out how Judy popped the question, step-by-step. In the meantime, get to know our bridal party!

Gettin' Crafty!

While Aaron has been away on a field trip (to the Bahamas, that jerk!), Judy has designated our dining room as crafts central. Welcome home, honey! ;)

What's she making? Well, we want to keep that a surprise... For now! Check back in a couple weeks for the reveal and comprehensive DIY steps. Get excited, y'all!

She Got it From Her Mama!

If you've ever met Judy's mom, you know she's quite the fire cracker. Something you might not know is that she is also a contract florist in Houston, and of course, she'll be doing our flowers for the wedding. We are truly lucky!

She doesn't just stop there though. Below is a picture of Judy's mom showcasing a fascinator she recently made for fun. Looks like we know who'll be custom making Judy's fascinator!

Time to Create the Save-the-Dates!

Aaron is purchasing the whole Adobe Creative Suite (mostly for his poster presentations and partially for Judy's nerd life), and once Judy gets her mitts on Adobe InDesign, she'll be able to finally create our Save-the-Dates. Just in time for our trip to Houston this Thanksgiving, where we'll print them from her parent's fancy printer. Being a bride on a budget is easy when you have the resources!

Judy's been browsing the interwebs for some unique ideas to incorporate into our Save-the-Dates. We wanted to be sure not to use something too common, since our wedding won't be. Don't get us wrong . . . we're going to have a standard wedding, but it will just be more of a party for our friends. Nothing too stuffy! And we definitely wanted to exhibit that in the Save-the-Dates, invitations, and what not.

Another thing we have to keep in mind is hoping you like them. After all, you're the ones that have to look at 'em!


PS: TODAY IS OUR FOUR-YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

To-Do's Before the I-Do's!

Judy's good friend Mindy shared this gem with her today. It's a nice general timeline for any bride-to-be. Easy on the eyes and well-organized, too. According to this, we're actually on par with our planning process. Guess that's a perk of having a wedding date so far away! We definitely have loads of planning left to do, but this guy is making things seem a little less daunting:

If you have some free time, you should definitely browse through Mindy's blog! Lots of good stuff in there - creativity in the advertising world, quirky images she finds from her tumblr, and plenty of cool stuff in general.

Busy Thanksgiving!

In preparation for our trip to Houston this Thanksgiving, we are starting to accumulate a list of things needed to be done while we are there:

(1) The number one task we need accomplished is securing a venue. We have our top three venue picks, and are kind of, sort of, completely obsessed with one in particular. Each venue is very affordable (Yes!) and very "us." We wanted to make sure the location of our ceremony and reception was a true reflection of ourselves. Of course, another major factor was affordability; which, much thanks to the vast size of Houston, was not a very difficult thing to find!

(2) We are considering using a day-of wedding coordinator to just consult on the day -of and -before the wedding; as opposed to having the wedding coordinator plan the wedding from the beginning. It offers us the luxury of having a professional help us take care of everything on the big day, but for cheaper! We have a couple consultants in mind, but we need to keep looking because their prices don't really agree to what we are willing to spend... Womp, womp.

(3) We really need to start choosing which hotels to visit for our traveling guests and/or bride & groom dressing rooms. We'll base the hotel candidates on its area and special accommodation rates. So far, I think we are looking into Houston's midtown area. We love Houston at night, and we want our guests to enjoy it as well.

Hopefully we can get it all done. We'll only be in town for a few days, with so many friends to see and things to do... No worries, we got this!

Also, get excited. Around this time is also when we find out our wedding party. We are keeping it intimate and thinking we only want two bridesmaids and two groomsmen, with one maid of honor and one best man. The decision to have a small wedding party was tough at first. While we both have several close friends, it was difficult to narrow them down to just four or five bridesmaids/groomsmen. But when we narrowed it down to just two, it actually made it easier. We love all our close friends so much, but this just made the most sense for us. We love you all!

Fresh New Layout!

Judy's creativity juices have been overflowing lately, and she has used some of that to update the look of our blog. If only she could use that zeal toward some wedding planning! So much left to plan, but we think the pieces will start fitting together whenever we officially decide which venue to use. Once that's settled, we can actually begin to tackle the other aspects of the wedding planning. Of course, we won't be able to shop around for venues until we are back in Houston for Thanksgiving break. Until then, we can use this time worrying about that darn guest list.

Date is SET!

It's official. We have set our date!

There were some factors we needed to weigh. It definitely needed to be conducive to Aaron's school/research schedule and Judy's parents being in Angola and all. Since her parents plan on returning to Houston every Christmas, and Aaron having Christmas break available, we figured that is probably around the time we could get married.

We also have friends and family traveling to Houston for the big day. So, we wanted to be able to have them make the most of their stay with all that Houston has to offer (For family-friendly ideas, check out Things to Do). That's when we opted to have our big day on a Thursday. Not only are we saving a LOT of monies on whichever venue we choose, but it allows the flexibility of using the weekend for some fun activities (and party time with our long-distance friends, of course).

With those few factors in mind, we also didn't want the wedding day to be too close to Christmas Day or New Years Eve. It took some deliberation (and caused some headache), but we can now present to you... our wedding date: December 12, 2013.

Even though we have yet to book our venue - which we will do around Thanksgiving - we doubt we'll have any issues reserving a date so far in advance. Hooray!

The Engagement Photos!

In our previous post, we mentioned we would use the travel time to the photo shoot as a reflection period. Now that we have our little list of wedding ambitions, we can tailor our wedding-planning to ensure we have a great time at our own wedding. Lots of good shtuff on that list, but we'll keep it to ourselves. ;)

The photo shoot location was stunning. Who knew West Texas had such a landscape? We definitely need to return, and maybe spend a night at one of the camp sites. As for the engagement photos, we could not be any happier with how they turned out. Much thanks to our amazing photographer, Amanda!