Wedding Week: The state of our poor house

For a while now our house has started to be a bit of a disaster.  We are accumulating things for the wedding as well as wedding gifts and have quickly run out of places to put things.  Not to mention the craft supplies and projects in mid stage that have taken over the dining room table, really the house is a disaster.  Which as most of you know is not normal for us.  Both of us are generally very clean and organized people so the state of the house has been causing a bit of anxiety I think for both of us.  I think the only saving grace is that rather than putting things away eventually we are moving so we can just leave it all in boxes and find a new home for it at the new house.  If you promise not to judge I will show you some pictures if for no other reason than to prove to those of you out there who have made reference to my OCD cleanliness that it does happen even to us:

dining room

storage room filled with wedding gifts and wedding stuff
as well as the lovely tower of empty boxes

guest room

There really is wedding stuff everywhere and sadly I don't see my life getting back in order anytime soon.  I guess I will just have to find a way to live with the chaos.

Wedding Week!

Wedding week has officially begun!  

We kicked it off Saturday night with some bachelor party fun for Nick and a second round of bachlorette party fun for me (I will share pics soon).  My St. Louis friends who couldn't make it to Indiana for the first bachlorette party decided we needed to have a little fun in StL.  We had a great night of dinner dancing and fun- thanks ladies!  

Going out "dressed" in bachlorette garb was definitely a conversation starter and inevitably the "when is the wedding?" question came up  When I would answer "next weekend"  a flood of other questions such as "Wow, are you ready?" or "Are you excited?" or "Are you nervous?" would follow.  I was never really quite sure how to answer any of the questions and while I knew logically the wedding was 7 short days away I don't think it had really sunk in yet.  That was until I woke up Sunday morning and realized that the next time I wake up on a Sunday I will be MARRIED!  

5 more days....

ps if you would like to follow the wedding week fun on twitter or facebook the official hash-tag is #mcwedding

It's Official...

we can officially get married!

Yesterday we took at trip to this lovely building:

to get our Marriage License.  It was a very weird experience and made the whole thing very real.  The first weird thing that struck me was just the bureaucratic-ness of the whole thing.  As I am sure most of you have been in a government office building and would agree they don't really evoke the same thoughts/feelings/emotions about marriage as well, weddings do.  For the most part they are very drab and very purpose driven (which isn't a bad thing) and as we sat answering questions the dichotomy of this place vs. the beautiful church we are actually getting married in struck me.  I was also struck by the fact that someone we have never met before, who knows nothing about us other than what our driver's licenses tell her has the power to declare that we can get married and in the State of Missouri without that declaration next week is nothing more than a fancy party.  But despite all that weirdness it is official we can now get married!

As if a wedding wasn't enough

11 Days from right now Nick and I will be married!  It is hard to believe that it is already almost here.  I really don't know where the last 13 months went.  Nick and I have been busy finishing up last minute wedding things, but really for the most part I feel like we are pretty prepared.  Which is a good thing because there has been something else that has been occupying our time for the last month.....

Buying this: 

Yep that is right 2 weeks after the wedding we will be closing on a house!  

Wanna see the inside?  Here is a little video tour I took on my camera when we first looked at the house.  

Disclaimers:
1.Please ignore the terrible camera work- I am no pro.
2. Ignore Nick and our wonderful realtor (btw anyone in STL who is in the market for a realtor we have a great one to reccomend!)
3.  It is only 3 bedrooms apparently I forgot that I went into that other bedroom already
4.  Not sure why I finished the tour with a shot of the closet.  I think I may have been thinking that was the door to the basement.
5.  Obviously no basement on the tour, there isn't much to see down there just yet.  It is completely unfinished, but we have lots of ideas for making it a great space.

So once I am done blogging about wedding life I will have a new project to blog with.

Wedding Wishes

A couple weeks ago I posted about our invitations and promised a post with some of the our favorite responses.  We got lots of wonderful heartfelt advice that made getting the RSVPs back even more special.  Here are some of the highlights:

"If each of you will put the other first you'll have harmony.  In disagreements don't accuse the other but explain your feelings.  Give each other some space to do their own thing, then share it with each other."

"No advice for Martha, only Nick...always listen to Martha.  You don't always have to say anything or make a suggestion.  Sometimes she doesn't need suggestions just a good listener."

"I'm not an expert on marriage but I was told a few things when I got married: 1)Say I love you a lot. 2)Hold hands in public. 3)Resolve issues before bed. 4)Laugh often. 5)Treat your spouse as #1"

"Nick- Always remember 3 words... 'you're right Martha"

"When those inevitable moments occur when you can't stand each other or times get tough, remember what brought you together and the love that made you say 'I Do"

"Remember to share everything with your new husband, including the housework."

And some of the more entertaining ones:

"Politics give guys so much power that they tend to behave badly around woman"

"Wishes- a baby boy....and a girl...and another boy...and another girl...and happiness.  Wisdom-a bottle of wine will solve any problem...that and telling Martha she's pretty. Advice- ditch the Cowboys and become a Saints fan!"

"We hope you enjoy the jacuzzi at the Holiday Inn! (we did)"

and this last one could only be explained with a picture:

"Nicholas, You have at least 50 years of rivalry ahead of you. GO CUBS"

Wedding To Do List

The remaining to do list really isn't very long, just a few odds and ends that need to get done.  A few weeks ago I had decided that last weekend would be a good time to tackle the list.  I had every intention of spending the weekend crossing things off the list, but instead we did this:

My sister's family and several other families rented a lake house not far from us for the weekend and we decided it would be more fun to spend time with friends and family.  Oh well we still have 25 days left....plenty of time, right?

Some Call it Flowers Others Call it a Weapon

I decided instead of having our flower girl throw petals we would have her carry a floral pomander instead.  I thought it would compliment the tutus well and would just be less mess to deal with.  Here were some of the photos I used for inspiration:

I showed these to my sister/mother of our 3 year old flower girl and her first reaction was that Emily would probably end up throwing it at someone, more than likely her baby sister.  Unfortunately I was already set on the idea so I guess we will just have to hope for the best and buy Payton some protective armor.

This week I decided it was time to get cracking on making the ball.  I just bought some ribbon, a foam ball and some fake flowers.  The hardest part was getting the ribbon all the way through the ball but with some force, creativity and a wooden spoon it was finally all the way through.  Then I just hot glued the flowers to the ball.  Here is the ball about half way done:

And here it is completely finished:

The whole project probably took me less than an hour and was very easy.  It turned out to be a little larger than I thought it would be but hopefully it won't be too big next to Emily and hopefully she doesn't decide to use it as a weapon.

You're Invited...

The invitations went out over a month ago and I have yet to post about them (and even worse I started this post 2 weeks ago and just realized I never finished it...sorry for being such a terrible blogger).  We decided to create our own invitations rather than purchasing something.  Nick did most of the hard work and gets the credit for how fabulous they turned out.  Here is the whole package together including the invitation to the rehearsal dinner:

I love how colorful they are and how they are uniquely us.  Here are each of the individual pieces:

Invitation

front of reception invitation

Back of Reception Invitation/Directions and Accommodations

Reply Card

Back of reply card

We decided to do post cards for the reply card as a way to save on postage and on the added paper of another envelope.  Since we had some extra space on the post card we decided to make a request.  The left side of the card says " Don't waste all this space share your memories, wishes, wisdom, or advice with us"  This has made getting the reply cards back in the mail that much more fun and hopefully soon I will do a post with some of our favorite responses.  

The last part of the invitation package that not everyone got to see was the rehearsal dinner invitation.  The rehearsal dinner is going to be our way of including our love of baseball into the weekend and Nick's parents have come up with some great ways to make the dinner baseball themed.  We wanted to introduce the night with so here is the invitation that we designed:

So there is the whole package.  I know I am a little biased but I think they turned out pretty darn good!