Day 251

Seeing as I may stop at this particular weight for now (out of fear of shrinking too small for my wedding dress) I thought I should upload an update weightloss photo for everyone.
As I look at the photos I REALLY can see what hubby-to-be was talking about ... my butt really IS gone! WOWZA!

Here I am at -33 lbs

had to wear my skinny jeans

left to right: -13lbs, -25lbs, -33lbs

sporting the original pants that I started in

What a difference! I will NEVER go back! 

Day 250 - Bridal showcases to come

As I narrow my checklist down even further I think back to my bridal showcase of last year and wish they had more throughout the year! I feel a bridal showcase would be quite useful as I'm struggling to narrow in on particular aspects.

Since they don't have them more often I figured I'd instead set up a facebook event and invite all who wanted to attend the bridal showcase this Jan. :)

<3 your hippie bride

Day 249 - Check...check

Checklist again:

• Man to marry - check
• Wedding date - Check
• Budget - Check
• Dress - Check
• Venue - Check
• Rings - Check
• Guest List - Check
• Invitations - Check
• Bridal Party - Check
• Photographer - Check
• Vows - Check
• DJ - Check
• Videographer - checkkkkiiisssh? 
• Money - um.... what's that? 

I really must hurry and decide on a videographer. I know I'm being insanely picky but it's important to me! 

<3 your productive hippie bride

Day 249 - Money, Money, Money, it isn't funny!

It's been a while, I've been busy. But lately I feel like I'm at a standstill. I have all the planning done but can't move forward until we have the money. Having budgeted for $300/month towards the wedding this means I can only take care of so much at once.
For instance, right now we are making 2 payments a month. One for our rings at a little over $160 and one for my dress at a little over $150. So I'm already over budget by $10. This means no payments on my selected venue, dj, invitations, flowers, favors and everything else.
Well I broke the rules this month. My bridesmaid and I went looking at flowers and got a great deal that we would otherwise miss out on. what would have cost me $370 minimum to have done cost me $35. I spent $35 and acquired the flowers for myself and all my bridesmaids. So this month I am over budget by $45 but that's not too bad considering it saved me a hella lot in the long run.
The venue deposit we have saved and waiting for us to go over the contract. There is only one more payment on my dress and so that will open up payments for other things. Scarily though, the payments on the venue will be $250 a month. meaning we are going to remain over budget by $100 for the rest of the year. This also means we won't be able to start payments on anything else as we will already be over our head with the other payments. I guess I will have to reassess our budget. My guess is we were under budget a few months and thus confused our schedule. :)

Long story short I am sitting here with everything sitting in front of me waiting for me to move forward with them but I can't until the toothfairy leaves money under my pillow at night. Something tells me getting my wisdom teeth pulled would lose more money than it would make though.

I have my invitations designed but I can't afford to start producing them. I have to buy ink, paper and craft supplies to start production. As much as we're saving money on them by my making them the ink itself is about $65 at most. What we decided to do was to send the invitations out in spurts of 10-30 invites. Three separate months of invites being sent out to budget our postal service into it.

Next month the money maker is on vacation and so overtime is not an option. What ever will we do? 

Day 246 - I do...soon

One year from today and I will be a married woman!

Almost symbolically I finished writing my vows today! Time to close the wedding planning book for the day.

Day 245 - Another wedding

It's amazing to think that in a year and one day I will shed the past completely and marry the love of my life.

There is another wedding coming up shortly and today I went to purchase our wedding presents for them. I learned a few lessons during this process.
1) Zellers kids Mac & Cheese is NOT vegetarian. Even though the menu describes all the ingredients and doesn't mention bacon.... it is loaded with bacon. Not just bacon bits on the top which I would have grudgingly picked off. But also throughout the meal there are giant chunks of bacon slime. GROSS!

2) You CAN get locked into a building! It doesn't just happen on Home Alone movies! While out with Genevieve buying the present off their registry Genevieve got sick. I rushed her to the bathroom but not quick enough. I was cleaning up the mess and trying to tend to her. Shortly after I hear a staff come in and I apologize for the smell. I explain that she was just sick and I am almost done cleaning it up. She looks at me stunned and tells me that they were locked up and leaving. She had come in to use the bathroom before they left. Had she not had to use the bathroom I'd have been locked in and later set off the alarm!!! Can you imagine. She then told me she didn't think I could make my purchase. I looked at her firmly and as nicely as I could stated, "I am making my purchase! I was almost locked in here! I am MAKING my purchase!"

She ran off ahead of me, presumably to advise the manager and when I came out they rang me in with no incident and let me out. I was absolutely stunned!


<3 your wiser hippie bride

Day 243 - REBA! Dress fitting

I am absolutely psyched to be seeing Reba in 69 days!

Then of course marrying the love of my life in 370 days!

I will be trying my wedding dress on for the last time before final purchase in 2 weeks. I'm a little nervous considering I have lost another 10 lbs since my initial fitting. Will I have to exchange it for a more expensive smaller size of the same dress? We'll see...
In the end it's only $300 more if I'm too small. I guess that's worth it...right? 

Day 241 - Invitations Designed

I have finished designing the wedding invitations! They are beautiful, prefect! They combine his original fairytale story about us, his love for video games and my hippie style.

Now I have to decide on a good day to have an invitation party and construct some invitations with my bridal party. Maybe some time in September when one of my bridesmaids returns home from summer vacation.

Oh how I want to start now! Of course I don't yet have the material though so I suppose I should just set money aside to acquire the necessary equipment. 

Day 240 - Wedding website

I am listening to Beautiful Mess while updating our wedding website. That song sure does take me back to the old days with hubby-to-be.

It's amazing just how much life has changed in the past few years and will only continue to change yet those old songs still mean the same to us.

Day 239 - Flower, by any other name

I've learned that cutting wired flowers is a lot harder than it looks. Having a few drinks before attempting this does not help!

I began construction of the bouquets today and have taken some pictures with my brothers help.

What a co-operative if not a little ... um... enthusiastic model he made.

I'm getting super excited for our wedding in 373 days! I received an e-mail today from the knot to remind me that I have to finalize my guest list, decide on the invitations, research videographers and sign the venue contract by the 23rd! Geesh! Thanks for the stress factor! I realize I set up these reminders and with good reason. However, until I received that reminder I felt I was ahead and now I feel like I'm falling behind.

I decided to have one more nail biting glance at the guest list and ensure we invited everyone that would otherwise throw eggs at us.

After going over and over the guest list I came to a final decision with the exception of one guest. Being a family member I am not sure if I want the possible drama that will follow their entrance. At the same time there could be a hefty amount of drama in not inviting them.

Invite or don't invite.....invite or don't invite.......*bites nails*

<3 your undecided hippie bride

Day 238 - Wedding productivity

My check list

• Groom: Check
• Dress: Check
• Venue: Check
• Flowerchild: Check
• Ring Bearer: Check
• Flowers: Check

How am I doing? <3 375 days to go.

It's a busy house today, have my brother, maid of honor, myself and our two kids here. I believe we will take the kids to the playground later and then more bridal productivity with Jenny after that.

<3 your productive hippie bride

Day 236 - Balancing out

Thrilled today when I took my measurements and learned I am finally losing the weight off my lower half. 1 inch off my hips, 3 off my butt and 2 off my thighs. I'm down a total of 30.5 inches from my original measurements. I'm glad it's the lower half now as that will effect my wedding dress size far less.

Of course that's the only place I have left to lose the weight anyway so I can only hope and assume that's where it'll continue to fall off.

<3 your hopeful hippie bride.

Day 234 - Too tiny

I just finished looking through old photos of myself from 7 months ago and beyond chatting "whale, whale, whale!" Now I'm going to parade around in booty shorts chanting, "you know you WANNNNNNNTTTTTT it!" until hubby-to-be notices. ;)

I pulled out all my old university clothes, not only do they fit....they are too big! Yes! Teenage body here we go!!!!!

I did learn an unfortunate lesson. Well a fortunate and unfortunate lesson. When folding the freshly washed stored university clothing I learned that I should not wear my engagement ring when folding clothes. It flies off whenever I shake out a shirt. Whoops. I'm not having the ring resized because in a few months I shall have the bridal set and wear half of that as my engagement ring instead. The former engagement ring will go on a finger it fits.

<3 your tinier hippie bride

Day 231 - Just dance

I want our first dance to be something special. We took months before we decided on the perfect song and now today I start the daunting task of coreographing the dance. I suspect it will be a fair amount of time before hubby-to-be is prepared to practice with me but at least in the worst case scenerio we can just rock back and forth like millions before us.

But I don't want that to be among my list of heartbreaks. So shimmy shake, left foot forward, right foot back and dip. It shall be amazing. 

Day 230 - Flying rings

I've lost so much weight my engagement ring keeps falling off. I sure hope my dress still fits. I'm starting to worry that I should slow down in case I have already lost 3 wedding dress sizes.

Then again I could put on some weight again and lose it after the wedding. Gaining weight is the easier answer and if it'd save me the cost of a second dress I'd consider chowing down a little for 10 lbs. At least that's what I say now...I probably wouldn't.