The first home

I know that for many people who are in a situation similar to my fiance and I, they are still in school/just finishing school/just starting out in the real world when they decide they are ready to get married. They may or may not have student loans, they may or may not live at home.

But I think for most people our age, when they get married they are looking forward to buying their first home together. This is one thing FI and I cannot share. We are both homeowners who acting as landlords. We have houses, in different states, and we aren't living in them. Now don't get me wrong. If we live in Boston after we finish grad school, we will undoubtedly live in my condo. I love it and it's beautiful. And if we live in Colorado, we will undoubtedly live in his townhouse there. We have great properties in great locations. It's just funny to be daydreaming of owning our first home TOGETHER that won't be a first home for either of us.

What firsts are you excited to share with your partner?

Unity Ceremony

When it comes to the unity ceremony, there are many options for a ritual that symbolizes the coming together of two individuals into one marriage. This is the short list:
1. Unity Candle - The bride and groom each take a lit candle and together light a third candle.
2. Sand Ceremony - The bride and groom pour different colored sands into a single vessel.
3. Wine Ceremony - The bride and groom pour wine a single vessel and drink from it.

There are many permutations of these types of ceremonies out there and, being the nerds we are, we had to create another one. We like to call it 'chemistry'.


Before I share the idea, I want to make sure that all credit for this idea goes to my fiance. He thought of the idea, he found the chemicals, and he is just plain awesome!

We plan to each pour a clear liquid into a vessel together. The nerdy magic trick comes when these to liquids mix, because they turn blue upon contact. Cool, huh? So our chemistry unity ceremony will hold the same meaning that the other unity ceremonies hold, but has a personal touch to it. And hopefully we can get some excited faces and cool pictures out of it too!

What unity ceremony are you using, if any? What meaning does it hold for you?

Where would you get married...

...if, between you and your fiance, you had 11 siblings with 27 nieces and nephews who live in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, North Carolina, Montana, Arizona, Colorado, and California? (just remember, this does not mention parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, etc.)

This is the first question we sought to answer when we began planning our wedding.

Being nerdy engineers, our first strategy for making a decision was to minimize travel costs for our large families. So we made an excel spreadsheet and looked up flight costs from all the places our families live to all the potential wedding locations. At this time, our potential wedding locations included Denver and Phoenix (fiance's family), Delaware and Philadelphia (my family), and vacation destinations such as Hawaii, Nassau, and Orlando. All we knew for sure was that we didn't want to get married in our current city of Boston. Tooo expensive!!!!

Our flight cost analysis led to us narrowing our choices to Philadelphia, Denver, and Orlando. And that is where I began my venue searches.

How did you decide on your wedding locale?

DIY Fabric Flowers

Here is my first attempt at making Tsumami Kanzashi flowers. They are relatively simple to make and soooo cute (though they require much patience)! I want to attempt more complicated designs like the ones in my previous post. A tutorial can be attempted once I take pictures to document the process. But I am pretty excited!

Nerdy Elements

As a couple of engineers, I know that there will be incorporation of some nerdy science-y elements into our wedding. One good place to start is in the attire.

Here are some fun ties I found that the groom might get a kick out of (all from ties.com)What self-proclaimed nerd doesn't know the value of pi to 50 places?
Nuclear physics - classy!
Good old trigonometry and calculus - very important to engineers
But the best (and most subtle) might be this graph paper!
And one more example. I think this could be a really fun way to incorporate our nerdiness into the wedding (and make for fun pictures!)

What do you think?

I caved

I bought new shoes. I am not supposed to be spending money on shoes, but these were so cute, and really nice colors, and ON SALE!
Are they in our wedding colors? they are silver and blue, which is in the color scheme. Are they comfortable? they look like it! i won't be worried about tripping since there is no pointy heel! But the real test will come when they arrive.

I found these bad boys on 6pm.com but didn't want to pay the shipping fee, so I searched online until I saw that Overstock.com had them with free shipping! So worst case scenario, my $35 can be refunded if I decide to return them!

Yay shoes! Boo my inability to say "no"!

New Distractions

So I have been searching for more good ideas for interesting DIY projects, and I stumbled upon a doozy, which I want to start RIGHT NOW!

These are Tsumami Kanzashi, hairpins made from the Japanese art of fabric folding. Since I am half-Japanese, I think these little flowers could be great gifts to my little flowergirls, and I am sure I can think of many other uses too! So I am probably off to the fabric store tonight for some silk fabric and starch.

The other project I have been eyeing has been these adorable little knit pillows. With big needles, this could be a relatively quick project (nothing like the lace shawl I have been working on, which has made very little progress in the past month).

Picture Perfect

We recently took some engagement photos with a photographer who is looking to build her portfolio. We were her first engagement shoot (she had done a few weddings before), so neither us nor her really knew what to expect.

But when I got the pictures back this week, I was BLOWN AWAY! Jen Ing is pretty talented, and here is just a small preview of her work.


Overall, really good experience, especially for a first attempt.

Inspiration!

This is my first inspiration board. Since we already decided our colors will be blue and silver, I figured it was time that I start figuring out a "look" or "feel". I don't know if this is the look or feel that I am going for, but I do enjoy the "feel" of these pictures. This is probably a little more sophisticated that we will go for though...we want the wedding to "feel" fun too!

Anyone else having trouble balancing the wedding "look" and "feel"?

Learning new tricks

The first thing I worked on after we got engaged in January was the website. We bought a domain and I got cracking.

I used to build websites often in college (though they were all crappy), so I began by:
1. refreshing my memory on html commands, frames, etc.
2. teaching myself to use photoshop and dreamweaver (again)
3. figuring out more complicated technologies (css, cgi, server-side scripting, etc.)
4. trying to come up with a layout.

My first attempt was using a dreamweaver layout:
This took me probably 6 hours of work on the design, and then a bunch of time filling in content. I thought it was pretty cute (and fun), but the colors weren't quite right, and it kind or looked like a little kid made it.

So I started over....

My second (and what I think will be the final) attempt I created by adapting stuff I saw online.
This took me 3 hours on the site design, and another 4 hours teaching myself how to make forms, first using perl, then using javascript, and finally succeeding with php. I am pretty happy with it. I like that I created it myself, because it means I can make sure the website matches everything else!

I LOVE THIS DRESS!

Ivory BCBG dress, 100% silk, sold for $360 at Nordstrom. If they sold it in white, it would end up being my wedding dress. I bought it off Nordstrom.com because I wanted to try it on.

I loved the way it fit, but decided I didn't have enough room in my budget to rationalize the purchase. So I returned it to Nordstrom promptly.

I found it again on Ebay (same dress, same size, brand new with tags) for $95. I bought it. For that price, this dress is totally rationalizable.

Have I mentioned that I love silk? I don't know why all silk wedding dresses have to cost $2K and up, but this one feels SOOOO GOOD when it is on you! (and I only paid $95 dollars!)

I have no good purpose for this dress yet, but it makes me happy, just being able to try it on in my apartment. Maybe it can become a rehearsal dinner dress or something ... anyone have any ideas?

What's on hand?

So I decided to start this whole wedding planning process by looking at what I might not need to purchase. My mother is, of course, most excited about the dress shopping. After trying on a few gowns, I have also become excited about the dress, because I found that I fit samples perfectly!

As exciting as dresses are, the accessories are not as exciting for me. Especially with the price tags on veils, shoes, and hair accessories.

So one lovely Sunday, I think to myself, I wonder if I have any accessories in my closet that I could use? Lo and behold, I then discover a crystal hair clip and a pair of never worn (tags still on), white leather shoes!
We have already chosen our wedding colors (blue and silver), and my Catholic mother is very animate about my having a white wedding dress (not ivory, not off-white...)
So it seems that these accessories may be a perfect fit! Right out of my closet! I think that is $100-150 saved already!

Transferred Obsessions

This past September, my then boyfriend introduced me to the art of crocheting (yes, I am serious). And I liked it so much, I proceeded to teach myself to knit as well. And I became so enamored with my new yarn hobbies, that I spend the next 4 months and many hundreds of dollars making gifts for all my favorite people.

I am pretty sure that I would have continued with this newfound passion of mine, except that something else extraordinary happened in January, right after Christmas. I got engaged!

And so in the past month, I have begun to develop my new obsession...wedding planning. And I am pretty sure this is only the beginning. Especially since the wedding I am planning will happen in September 2010 at the earliest. But then again, many good things come to those to start early!