I found my shoes!!!

I love how the universe gives you EXACTLY what you're looking for sometimes. Even if it's something as simple and insignificant as a pair of shoes.

When I first picked out my wedding dress, I immediately envisioned what my perfect wedding shoes would look like. But I was skeptical as to whether or not the shoes of my daydreams existed in real life. So I didn't fret too much about it. 

Fast forward to Wednesday August 28th, 11am, West LA Marshall's -- I walk inside and what do I see on display right by the entrance? My dream shoes!!! I'm not kidding, these were a dead ringer for the ones I pictured in my head months earlier. And they were half price! Double score!!!

Thank you universe. You are awesome. :)


**Louisa**

Pre-Wedding Health Kick

As is traditional for most brides to be, I am currently in a pre-wedding health kick. Why? Though I'm not necessarily trying to lose any weight (I am not overweight.), I would like to tone up a bit. But the biggest reason is I just want to look and feel my best on my wedding day. And when do I look and feel my best? When I'm exercising regularly and eating healthy. I have so much more energy and am overall just happier!

GYM ROUTINE

Over the past several years I've learned to love working out. Especially cardio. Ooo I love me some endorphins! I'm a regular at any of the many high intensity classes at 24 Hour Fitness and a HUGE fan of running. But I'm definitely a slacker in the strength training department. Because I hate it. :P

So last month I signed up for a handful of sessions with a personal trainer to help reinvigorate my workouts. She gave me a lot of cool exercises that will help tone my upper body (my problem area) and core. And best of all, these are FUN exercises that don't FEEL like strength training!

We did a lot of use-your-own-body-weight drills and balancing exercises (Try doing dead lifts while balancing on a Bosu ball. Not easy!). This made me very happy as I've always been a little intimidated by the machines at the gym. Some of them look kinda like the exam table at my gynecologist's office. Not cool.

It's been tricky getting to the gym every day with the long hours I've been working on set recently. (14 hour day yesterday. Eugh.) But regardless, I try to do SOMETHING everyday. Even if it's just a quick run around the neighborhood and some crunches. 

So far I've lost 5 lbs. of body fat!

DIET

It's a well known fact that if you REALLY want to see the fruits of your labor at the gym, you have to watch what you're eating. I usually eat pretty healthy, but portion control can be a problem. I've had to stop buying peanut butter. It's good for you in moderation, absolutely. But I have NO discipline around the stuff. Just try and stop me from eating the whole jar! So it's bye bye PB for now...

But this will be my biggest challenge diet wise: drinking. I'm a German girl. So a nice tall beer is a constant companion. Why does something so delicious have to be so bad for you? It's not just the calories you're taking in, it's the terrible things it does to your body!

I went 3 weeks without a single drink at the start of my training sessions last month just to help kick start my metabolism. But here's what I didn't expect to happen at the end of 3 weeks: my skin positively GLOWED! Alcohol had literally been sucking all the life out of my skin.

So if I want that glow on my wedding day too, I'm sorry to say that alcohol is out for the next 6 weeks. It's gonna be SO HARD. All the Oktoberfest brews come out this time of year. And those are my favorite! But the results will be worth it.

And hell, our honeymoon's in Ireland, one of the greatest beer countries there is! What a perfect way to reward myself after 2 months of hard work!

That beer is gonna taste SO GOOD...


**Louisa**

Invites Are Out!/Website Woes

We got our invitations delivered from Vistaprint last week and they turned out GREAT!

The first wave of invites has been sent. The second wave will be sent out today. A third wave will hopefully follow shortly thereafter as we continue to collect addresses. And then a few stragglers/people we overlooked will get invites. Then we'll be DONE!

The invitation process has been the most stressful wedding detail so far. It will be a HUGE relief to be done with it!

On the website front, we discovered a minor glitch with the RSVP section earlier this week when our first friend tried to RSVP. Apparently The Knot doesn't allow just anyone that visits your website to RSVP. You have to create a guest list and physically input everyone's name. 

I mean, it makes sense now that I think about it. You wouldn't want random strangers RSVPing to your wedding. But still... it was an extra step I was really annoyed that I had to take. 

Also, just to cover my ass in case there are any future problems with RSVPing, I listed my email on the website as a backup way to RSVP.

So all should be well with the website now, friends!!!


**Louisa**

August Update!

Less than 2 months to go! The updates are going to start coming fast and furious as the big day draws closer.

Here's what James and I have accomplished in the past month.

• INVITES - We finally got our wedding invitations designed and ordered. This is something I wish we hadn't waited so long to do, but I think it will be fine. Most of our friends already know about the wedding anyway. :) And since James and I are a no frills kinda couple, we ordered our invites online at Vistaprint. We uploaded the caricature our friend Gino drew for us, wrote some text on the inside of the card, and boom, that was it! The drawing is already super amazing. Why complicate things by adding high end card stock or fancy lettering? Now for the next step. Actually mailing the invites to people...
• WEBSITE - We got this idea from some friends of ours (thanks Jesse and Kelley!). The website The Knot has free wedding website templates you can use. And they look great! All the pertinent info on our wedding like directions and registry info is now in one place. It allowed us to keep our wedding invites clean and simple. Rather than cramming the invitations full of information, we've referred the guests to our website. It's so simple! I love it! We don't want to share the web address publicly just yet though. The main image on the site is the awesome caricature that is also on the invites. I'd like to make sure people are surprised when they open the invites. :)
• HONEYMOON - After talking to a couple different travel companies, we settled on our perfect Irish itinerary! We designed a custom route that will take us to Dublin, Galway, Killarney, Cork, and back to Dublin. The itinerary's got a great mix of city and countryside. Also, it's very flexible, allowing us to make excursions if and when we want to! I'll write more on the specifics of our honeymoon itinerary in a future blog. But if you're interested, we're working with the Massachusetts based company Tenon Tours. They've been very good to us so far. Definitely check them out if you're wanting to travel to the U.K.!

So the to-do list keeps getting shorter! Next on our list is to finalize our vows and sample some wedding cake! Also, my wedding dress should be arriving at Bonny Bridal any day now! I'll need to go get fit and pick out some finishing touches like shoes and jewelry.

To be continued!

**Louisa**

July Update!

"I can see the finish line!" Famous last words...

As you've probably noticed, this is my first wedding blog in two months. That's because wedding planning had to take a backseat during the month of June due to an unexpected job shake up for my fiance. Long story short: James was offered a new job in Santa Monica, he accepted, and 3 weeks later we moved from Long Beach up to Los Angeles. So June was almost 100% devoted to packing and apartment hunting.

Thankfully we're all settled in now and I've started to work on some wedding things again. Here's what I've got so far!

• Oklahoma engagement party! This was one of the reasons our June move was so rushed. We booked a June trip to Oklahoma months ago and had no idea we would end up needing to look for new places to live at the exact same time. Luckily my mom handled most of the planning (thank you mom!). We held the party at Gaslight Theatre in Enid, OK (I practically lived here growing up so this venue is very special to me.). We had delicious catering from Jumbo's Foods. We had drinks. And *drumroll please* we had BEER PONG - a unique engagement party feature for sure! We had fewer friends attend the party than expected, but it kept things a little more intimate. And that's always fine by me. :)
• Flights/hotels booked for all immediate family! The hotel we ended up going with was The Pacific Inn in Seal Beach. The reviews were very good, it is located within walking distance of our ceremony site, plus it has family suites available to make everyone's stay feel a little more home-y. James and I will be staying in the hotel too for the couple of days leading up to the wedding. We may end up just staying here for our wedding night as well and save the fancier hotel rooms for our honeymoon. (Irish castle, anyone?)
• Registries are set up! We have one at Honeyfund and a smaller, more traditional one at Amazon. We'll most likely continue to edit these registries up until the wedding as we continue to think of things we might need on our honeymoon and at home. We've already received several gifts from people who attended the engagement party in Oklahoma! (If you are one of these people, THANK YOU!!!)
• Irish honeymoon planning is well underway! James and I are giving ourselves a couple days to decompress after the wedding, then we'll hop on a plane from LAX to Dublin! We've been talking to a couple different travel companies and they're helping design our ideal itinerary as we speak. My biggest complaint with European tours I've taken in the past is that every minute of every day is already planned. If I'm having to set an alarm clock every morning in order to get to an excursion on time, it just doesn't feel like a vacation to me. I'd rather have more days in fewer cities with fewer planned excursions. I want to discover a new town on my own schedule. So that's exactly what we're doing. We'll be focusing on southern Ireland - places like County Cork, Galway, and of course Dublin. We'll take a few excursions in each town, at our leisure. Then return to LA 9-10 days later. We should return home rested, not exhausted! THAT'S a honeymoon!
• James' friend Gino finished the caricature art for our wedding invites! I'm SO THRILLED with how it turned out. It's going to take all my strength not to show people this drawing before the invites get sent out. Aaaah!!! It's so good!

And there you have it!

I am so happy I got so much wedding stuff squared away back in April and May. Otherwise I'd be scrambling right now. So now I'm pretty much right on schedule instead of ahead of schedule. But that's ok. 

Since the move to LA, I've had a few people ask, "Aww... aren't you frustrated that you already booked your wedding in a Long Beach location?" The answer is quite the opposite! It's perfect! James and I have friends all over LA and Orange County. Long Beach is the halfway point. No one has to travel too far! Plus I may not live in Long Beach anymore, but I still love that town. My wedding is a damn good excuse to visit. :)


**Louisa**

I can see the finish line!

If you would have told me back in March when I started this blog that I'd be basically finished wedding planning before memorial day, I'd say you were out of your mind. We didn't even have a date picked out two months ago! Yet here we are, May 15th, still 4 1/2 months out from the wedding, and nearly done.

Here's an update on what's been coming together over the past couple of weeks.

• I made a decision on a wedding dress! I'll go in to get measured by the boutique this weekend. All I'll have to do after that is shop around for some accessories -- shoes, jewelry, hairpieces, and what have you. Then I'll be done with clothing! Since my maid of honor Sophie is my only attendant, I'm letting her wear whatever she wants. No bridesmaid dresses!
• We finally met in person with our officiant Alan over the weekend. James and I still aren't exactly sure what we want the ceremony to include. So we spent some time bouncing ideas off each other. Alan was thrilled that we don't want our wedding to be a 100% serious affair. There will be nerdiness, you can count on that. :) We left the meeting with several good ideas. We'll continue to brainstorm with Alan in the upcoming months until we've found the perfect mixture of humor and romance...oh! We also picked out a great little spot on the beach to have the ceremony!
• My mom has started planning an engagement party for my Oklahoma friends during the first week of July. James and I will be in town that week anyway. As I said in a previous blog, this will basically serve as the "Oklahoma wedding" since I know very few folks from back there will be able to make the trek out to California. This is a way to let them celebrate with us!
• Sophie has started planning a bachelorette party! Since she'd like me to be surprised, she's keeping a lot of the details secret. I did mention however that I'd like to keep it mellow. I've already been to Vegas twice this year. I'm kinda partied out! So I think she's scheming up either a spa weekend or a wine country getaway... we'll see. I can't wait to see what she and my girls come up with!
• I'm scoping out hotels in Seal Beach and Long Beach near our ceremony and reception sites. I already have a favorite. Some of the hotels in the southeast corner of Long Beach don't have the greatest reviews and I want to make sure my family is comfortable while they're in town. My mom and grandparents have already purchased plane tickets. They were concerned with airfare continuing to climb, so they got an early jump on that!
• We've found out where we want to do our registry! Honeyfund. We went to a friend's wedding a couple weekends ago and this is what they used. James and I had already been keen on the idea of having guests just help out with the honeymoon, since we already own quite a bit in the household wares department. Using this site seems a little more official than just asking for money. Plus our guest would know which aspect of the honeymoon they were helping out with! There are lots of possibilites! -- a nice dinner out, a bottle of champagne, a night in a hotel, etc...

The only thing I haven't got the ball rolling on yet is invites. And yeah, that's kind of important. So that's the next step.

But other than that, all the big stuff is done. And it feels AWESOME.

**Louisa**

Wedding Dress Love Triangle

This past weekend my maid of honor Sophie took me out for my first wedding dress shopping excursion! I drove out to her neighborhood in Brea, CA and we checked out two dress shops -- Bonny Bridal and David's Bridal. 

First we hit up Bonny's.

Our appointment here could not have gone any smoother. I liked almost everything I tried on! But there were two standouts. I fell madly in love with both.

I left the store knowing that either one of those dresses could easily be the one. But I needed to sleep on it. Maybe one dress would start to edge out the other in my mind...

Next we hit up David's.

This appointment wasn't quite as smooth. The shop was crawling with teenagers trying on prom dresses. So even though we had an appointment time, we didn't get helped until about 45 minutes later.

But once we got a consultant to help us, everything was fine and moved very quickly. I'd spent some time on the David's Bridal website beforehand so there were a few styles I couldn't wait to try on! But once I got them on, I was underwhelmed. My mind kept going back to the two dresses I'd tried on at Bonny's a few hours earlier.

I had already fallen in love.

So Sophie drove us over to downtown Brea for a much needed glass of wine and some dinner. We talk about my two favorite dresses from Bonny's a bit more. And we were still stumped. Both are beautiful, both are flattering, both feel very me, and both are practically identical in price. What to do, what to do...

Yesterday I sent pictures of both the dresses to some friends and family to get some more opinions. I'm still waiting to hear back from a few people, but there is definitely a heavy favorite between the two.

I think I may be about ready to make a decision...


**Louisa**