Dear Joe, if you are reading this and we're not married yet...DON'T GO ANY FURTHER!

I don't know how common wedding gifts between the bride and groom on the day of their wedding are nowadays but I thought of the perfect gift for Joe today! I'm not expecting him to get me anything (to be honest, I don't think he would even know that some people do that) but I wanted to do something for him anyway. What is this perfect gift you ask? It's a...

Ohhhh yea, a world map! Let me explain. Joe and I love to travel. Well, he probably does more than me because I could go to Hawaii every year and never see anything else (and be completely fine with it) but he likes to explore new places and not "repeat" too much. We have always thought it would be cool to get a big map and mark with pins where we've been together in the world.

Because I was a little unmotivated to study all day long and this morning I watched a video of a road trip posted on one of the blogs I read every day, the idea randomly popped into my mind and gave me the travel bug itch hard core. After doing a little "map" search online, Allposters.com was where I found this gem. Plus, they were having a sale (that ends today!) for 15% off whatever you buy and that money will be donated to Japan. Double score! Altogether with shipping, this map cost a grand total of $21! I think I might try to find a way to frame it but I'll have to make sure we can still fill it with lots and lots of pins! I'll also write something really cheesy to go with it like, "for all the places life will take us together." Ha  It should be here sometime next week and with Joe off at class Monday-Wednesday straight after work, I think I'll be able to get to the package before he does. Keep your fingers crossed:)

My gift to Joe may not have costed me hundreds of dollars but all the memories that we'll be tacking up on it will mean so much more. It will be fun stepping back and looking at all the places we've been together. In fact, he's already thinking about trips for next summer! Thank goodness I'm marrying someone who wants to travel the world!

Britney Tuesday!

Ever since I was a middle school teeny bopper I have loved Britney Spears. Now I'm sure Joe will love to know that I'm talking about Britney in our WEDDING blog but her new album comes out today and she's coming to

St. Paul July 6th. Yes, July is shaping up to be a great month. Let's take a gander at the upcoming events...

• July 6th: I'll be seeing Britney (must get tickets first!)
• I'll probably have some sort of Bachelorette Party in July
• I'm getting married July 23rd!
• And leaving for our Honeymoon the 25th!
• Oh, and I'll get a "free" day off from work for 4th of July as well

Call it my lucky month but I can not wait for July! In wedding news, yesterday I received our label paper I ordered for our wine bottles. All that's left to do is find some time to print and cut them out!

Hey Monday!

The only news I really have to share is I picked up Joe's wedding band on Saturday and it fits him perfectly! It's so weird to see a wedding ring on his finger but I love it and can't wait until he wears it every day! Until the big day though, it's some place safe and away from getting lost.

Joe and I bottled another kit of his beer on Saturday while watching several nail biting March Madness games. So far we have about 80 bottles of homemade beer ready to go for the wedding and he's busy making more. I finally have our hallway closest back for "normal" household items since one of our roommates moved out last weekend. Howver, Joe has already taken over the spare bedroom closet now for his beer. What a silly guy.

Four months to go!

I started writing this post and it hit me, four months to go which may I remind you are quickly approaching. Holy Buckets! I'm going to become Sarah Shelerud - say that five times fast:) Wow, ok...breathe...back to checking things off the Ultimate To Do List!

Pronto.

Back to what I had originally started writing, because I'm sitting pretty good for my exam later tonight - for some reason it's all "clicking" in my brain, I decided to take some time and look for a label of some sort to print our fancy wine labels on. I am so excited to see the final product!! I found OnlineLabels.com which had a great variety of different sizes, colors and textures and was able to find full sheet labels! And for cheap - $12.95 for 100 lables which actually gives us room for all 150 labels since Christina put two on per sheet! They should be shipped and on my front door by next week and I'm hoping to print everything out at work again. I'll probably cut everything at home since I'm no longer on Spring Break. For $17 total, I can't really complain on this one!

With four months to go of wedding planning, six weeks left of school starting today and the usual life happenings, I am so excited to walk down the aisle and then jump on a plane and relax on our Honeymoon. I love my life! Yes, I'm being cheesy but I can't help it - if you could see the smile on my face right now, you would know just how excited I am!

122 days!

From our Wine Label Creator herself!

I know I've mentioned her name on the 'ol blog before, but Christina is finally done designing our wine labels! We love how they turned out and all that's left to do is find some sort of sticky paper to print them out and slap them on the bottles. All 150 of them.

She is a fellow blogger herself and shared a special post about our labels on her blog today so head on over and read about it here. Thank you for helping us add a touch of detail to our big day Christina!

Joe and I appreciate all the time you've put into these labels and I am so excited to show these labels and homemade wine off!!

PS...you may want to brush up on your square dancing skills Christina, I expect to see you out on the dance floor :)

Invites are 95% done!

What a successful weekend I just had! Thanks to some incredible ladies in my life, we were able to put together the invites and address the majority of them in about two hours. I managed to only wreck seven envelopes due to writing mishaps but other than that it went perfectly. I love how the finished product turned out and the blues didn't look that bad together too:) And I was so worried about that...

The ladies

The invite makers included my Mom, my Grandma Mic, my aunt Toni, my two cousins Nikki & Hannah and my sister Sadie. Gotta love a helpful family! Thanks to all who helped put these invites together! I really appreciate it and loved spending time with you! Here are some pictures from the day...

 

This is the best my Dad could do centering us in the photo...he thought he was the best photo taker in the world.

All that's left is getting the postcard stamps after they go up in April and then sending them out! The rest of the weekend consisted of watching a couple movies with the family, taking a walk with my mom and visiting with Joe's family before making the drive back home. The weekends are never long enough but it was nice to get back to Joe again. He booked our last ferry we needed for our trip last night and started looking around at things to do in Tofino. And I have some very good news...the Humpback whales and some Orca will be around in July when we're there and we are going to take a boat out to visit with the whales a bit. You probably have no idea how excited I am for this. I love, and I mean, love these big whales.

Whooo...is it time for our Honeymoon yet?

The weekend line up...

1) Find things to humor myself for the rest of the day here at work - study, organize guest list addresses, watch the clock

2) Drive home! Its been over a month since I've seen my family and I'm so excited to go home for the weekend!!

3) Run to the post office to get a second opinion on our RSVP postcard sizes - $0.29? $0.44?

4) Have family help out with assembling our invites! Although I probably won't be sending them out for another month it will be great to get these done and ready to go.

5) Hair cut! My long locks are too long for an updo so I'm getting some inches cut off!

6) Enjoy the rest of my weekend and prepare for the last seven weeks of the semester:)

Are we feeling a wee bit lucky today??

Happy St. Patty's Day friends! Of course I'm the only one at work today that forgot to wear green...oops! This morning I went to the Paper Depot before work to get the rest of our yellow paper that we needed. Our invites are officially printed and cut and that makes me extremely happy. I literally spent all day at work cutting and measuring to make sure they were correct in size so I'm about ready to be done with them. Almost there.

Bowling tonight - Better start stretching!

Dear Invite, why can't you be easy.

These blasted invites have proven time and time ago that they like to be difficult. Let me explain. As I have already vented about in earlier posts, finding the right blue to go with our navy paper was nothing short of an easy task. I knew I could never get the color perfect but I was excited that I came pretty darn close. Monday I came into work early again to start printing off our invites but what I like to call "toner dust" kept getting all over the invites and the color was printing well. I came to the conclusion that because I kept switching the old toners out with new toners, I was tossing the printer around too much which lead to the toner dust falling all over the invites. Defeated, I gave up and tried again yesterday morning.

It was a new day, I put in the paper and got one paper jam after the other. After about 20 pieces go through, the printer gets better about picking up the thicker paper and usually it's smooth sailing from there. Not this time though. The wording looked perfect but the picture we have wasn't printing fully. I went through our whole ream of paper and think I have barely enough "good" invites that we need. Some of the pictures are very spotty and others are all right although none of them are perfect and I was getting very frustrated.

Later that day my co-worker and I were talking and she tried a smooth piece of cardstock - our paper has a bit of a texture to it. And what do you know, it printed beautifully. We finally found the culprit...laser printers do not like textured paper. I decided to show Joe how they printed and get his opinion on the whole thing. Should we keep them? Should we buy new paper and start all over again? I have to go back to the Paper Depot anyway because they didn't give us enough yellow paper so it's not like I would be making an extra trip to pick up new paper. To top it off, because I had been printing all the trial runs on white paper, I never thought it would look different on our off white, yellowish paper. So now THE BLUE IS OFF again!! UGH.

Lo and behold, after I spent hours cutting and hating these invites because everything went wrong on them, Joe loved them! He loved how they didn't print a solid color (because that is how most of the picture is anyway) and of course matching the blue wasn't that big of a deal to him. It doesn't look terrible but I know it's not perfect. I was actually surprised he didn't mind how they printed. To be honest, they're not that bad...I just know how they should be since I have spent hours on them. I just have to accept that fact that I am not a professional printer or graphic designer.

So here's what my desk has been looking like the past few days...Thank goodness I'm on spring break!

One year ago today...

One year ago today Joe got down on one knee and asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. Although he knew before he even asked that I would say yes, it was the easiest decision of my life.

If you want to read about the Proposal, you can do so here. But here we are, a year later and coming up on four months before our big day! It's crazy how far we've come in planning but at the same time how much we have left to do! In all honesty, I can't wait to share in this special day with our friends and family. However, I'm more excited to marry my best friend and take off on our honeymoon where we can relax, no more wedding planning and simply enjoy being newlyweds. Ahhh... What ever are we going to do when all this planning is done?! :)

Over the weekend Joe and I went in to look for our wedding bands and it was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be but we ended up finding perfect ones. Joe isn't a ring guy so seeing a ring on his finger was a little weird but he found one that is very simple and one he'll like to wear. I kept going back between a plain white gold band (which I liked more than I thought I would) and one with a few diamonds. Because I'm not going to sauter them together I ended up going with this one...

I chose this band because if I decide to wear just my band it will have a little "something special" to it and my engagement ring looks great with this band. Yippe!!

One year ago today I said yes and in 131 days we get to become Mr. and Mrs. Joe Shelerud!

Loving this life....

Five things...

1) Our bowling team didn't do the greatest last night. It was an off night.

At least Joe bought me some Girl Scout Cookies! Yum:)

2) INFO cards are printed and ready to be cut...

3) Over the weekend we're going shopping for our wedding bands! Whoo:)

4) Day Two of spring break and I'm bored. Feels good but weird at the same time...like I should be doing something somewhat productive. I did organize my wedding book...does that count? Maybe watch the latest episode of Jersey Shore? Classy.

5) It's Friday.

 nuf said.

Officially on Spring Break and Officially in Wedding Mode

Well, spring break doesn't truly start until next week but thanks to my one and only class and finishing up my exam last night, I'm done. And I'm really enjoying the mental breather. It's nice to look ahead though and see that I have only seven weeks to go until summer vacation! Warm sun I can feel you now - except there will be lots of suntan lotion:)

This morning I came into work early and started the process of printing our RSVP cards. It went pretty smooth once I got past the "paper jam" message that kept popping up. Free printing on a good laser printer isn't too shabby either. My co-worker (same one who has the bf with the Pantone book) is a major scrapbooker and is bringing in her good paper cutter for me on Monday. Oh lucky day! What good co-workers i have:) I have to tweak our INFO cards a tad but I'll print those tomorrow morning and maybe start the actual invite printing as well or leave it for Monday. I'm thinking I may need to throw a "help me assemble these invites" party soon at the rate I'm going!

As much time and work I've put into 1) learning how to use Photoshop and 2) designing/editing these invites, it's great to sit back and look at something you've created. Plus, Joe absolutely loves how they turned out! Hey, gotta make the Groom-to-be happy you know! Now, I guess designing the programs in next on the list. Which I found this quirky way of doing it that I absolutely adore...

Other than that, my Grandpa cut down some birch trees for us to use today. Gasp! Don't worry...he's planted quite a few in his lifetime to make up for the three we lost today. And they were just baby ones anyway. We'll use these for our cake/cheesecake platters and such. Crossing off "birch stumps"! 

Flowers = Check!

As mentioned last week, getting a hold of our florist was a couple weeks worth of having the wrong number and voicemails. Last Friday, after finally getting a hold of her, we narrowed down our flower list and over the weekend she got back to me with the pricing. For my bouquet, five bridemaid's bouquets, six wrist corsages and 13 boutineers our total came to $550. Now, I don't know how much flowers typically run but I think for all that we're getting it's a pretty good deal! They'll put in the order two weeks before the wedding and we'll have someone pick them up the morning of the big day! Crossing flowers off my ultimate to do list!

On another note, I came across this picture from an engagement session this morning and love the picture frame they are holding. I could easily make one of these and how perfect would it go with our barn/vintage/awesomeness theme!?

The picture may be a little small but it says, "I have always know it was you." Ahhh...love it.

Registry = Check!!

The original plan was to do only two of our three registries this weekend but we went for all three. My legs and back were sore by the end of it too. I must have no support in my boots haha. Saturday night we were at Target for two hours trying to beef up our registry since we figure most people will shop there. I mean, Target is the go to place after all! After weaving up and down aisles for the first half hour, we only had a basketball and a football. Both Joe's scan:)

This was mine but he didn't go for it....

I mean who wouldn't want Ricky Martin's book?! jk. To be honest, I thought the Target registry would be fairly easy to complete because every time I go there I leave with something I hadn't planned on getting. But we quickly realized we're sitting pretty good in life and don't need a whole lot. Which I guess is a good thing but I did take the time to scan a few kitchen items that would be an upgrade to what we currently use. I've slowly been updating our registry online since Saturday - changing things out, adding more things.



Joe using the scanner wisely:)

As soon as we got home Saturday Joe quickly started researching what we added to our list and began making switches on things that didn't have good reviews. Gotta love that about him! Always making sure our purchases are going to last us awhile:) Sunday we went to Sears and Gander Mountain.

Joe really wanted this...I said no.

Joe added some tools at Sears and I added a crock pot but overall I think we only have about 15 items on that list. We'll see what we get! And then the Gander Mountain registry is old school! You actually have to write down the UPC's of any items you want and then they fax the list over to the stores you want. Finally, a store Joe couldn't try to scan me! And believe me, he did it ALL the time. We registered for a lot of camping gear - a hiking backpack, sleeping bags, some chairs, and even Kayaks. Yes, I know people will probably jump on those because they would love to carry those big things around with them but we figured might as well try. Overall, I think we did pretty good on our registries and there's lots of good things to pick from!

Also, big announcement everyone....Invite design is COMPLETED! Yesterday I was able to look at the Pantone book and ended up decently close to the blue of our paper. The guy who brought it down reiterated the fact we won't be able to match it exactly unless we went to a professional printer where they could mix the ink color themselves but frankly, we're not the desperate to have it match. I printed a sample on our good paper this morning and they look great. Invites will go into printing Thursday and Friday and next week I'll be cutting. Thank you spring break! Now I have time to focus my time on the wedding details...at least for seven days. Whoo!!

I WILL finish these invites!!

Finding the right navy blue is getting harder than I thought. And there is no easy way (that I have at my finger tips) to match the color of my paper to a blue in photoshop. In fact, Christina (who is doing our wine labels) told me it was nearly impossible. Ugh. BUT she did say it can be done with the help of a Pantone book. I'm not quite sure exactly what it is, but it's suppose to have the codes to every color out there and my coworker's special friend who works in the same building I do has one of these. I'm hopefully meeting up with him Monday to get some extra help! Hopefully we can figure this out since that is that last thing on our invites that I am trying to tweak!

Also, this weekend Joe and I get to do something I have been looking forward to since we got engaged. We're starting the process of registering!!! I have always wanted to go into a store, point at whatever I want, and somehow have it magically appear before me. The wedding registry will be the closest I will EVER get to it actually happening:) We are going to register at Gander Mountain, Target (of course) and Sears. Joe wants tools. I told him I better not get any tools at the showers. ha. We probably won't get to all three over the weekend but maybe a couple. I am PUMPED:)

Happy Weekend!

Working on the Invites...

Yesterday I really started focusing on designing our invites using Photoshop (hence no post). Thankfully, I haven't pulled out all of my hair yet so I'll still have a nice up-do for the big day. Photoshop is a great tool that can help you design/create amazing things but learning how to do all of that definitely takes many hours of try and try again. I have most likely learned how to do about 0.5% of all that Photoshop is equipped to do.

I have so much to learn...

We have our overall concept designed, now it's about tweaking things here and there. The biggest obstacle will be getting the right navy blue to match the paper we picked out. As long as it's close, I'll be fine with that! As soon as we like we what see, we'll print them out, cut the paper and then I'm bringing it all home to have my family help assemble them. I'm taking up people's offers to help like nobody's business!! Spring break is coming up quick so I have one week to finish the design and print away.

In other updates, for the past two weeks I have been trying to get ahold of our florist to see when we have to start thinking flowers again. After trying a couple times last week I finally texted her husband (who works with me) to see if I had her correct phone number. Turns out she got a new number so he gave me her new one on Friday. Monday I texted her and still having not heard from her, I decided to call this afternoon. The voicemail was for a Laura (her name is Meggan). Great. I texted her husband again to ask for her number again and the one he gave me last Friday was one number off! Finally got through and we'll be catching up soon. What a fiasco! At least she didn't bail on us!

Oh wedding planning joys:)

Suits are IN!

Just got a call from Men's Warehouse that the rest of the suits came in today! I was headed there tonight anyway to pick up Joe's suit so I'll gather up the rest of them when I'm there. Hopefully they fit everyone! Now we'll have to start the hunt for shirts and ties for the boys.

No other wedding news today but it's the first day of March!! Spring is on it's way:)