Wedding Weekend Part 2: Wedding Preparation

Around 6:00 Saturday morning, all hope of sleeping had stopped for this girl.  I woke up, slowly got myself together and stumbled downstairs for breakfast.  For what its worth, I have to say that my stay at Country Inn and Suites was amazing and I will definitely make a point to stay at one whenever I can.  The breakfast was seriously restaurant quality.  Anywhere that gives me a phenomenal free breakfast has a special place in my heart.  Not to mention that the room was spectacular, the staff was really helpful, I could keep going on but I'll stop.  Because this post is not about a review for the hotel.

So onward.  Breakfast.  Awesome.  It was all carbs and sugar.  Eggs that I haven't seen prepared tend to scare me so no protein (minus some bacon) but I had a banana, a small apple danish, homefries, orange juice and coffee.  I figured I probably would be too nervous to eat later so I chowed down.  The girls slowly gathered together and by 9 AM we were all at the salon getting primped and pretty.

My hair woman, Amanda is seriously the best thing that ever happened to my hair.  She gets that when I say half an inch, I mean half an inch.  Although frequently she tells me that I don't want what I think I want and when she's done making her argument for what I really want, my hair gets done HER way.  This day was no different.  I wanted my hair BIG because it photographs rather tight (amazing for the girl who normally has a fro).  Every time that I thought my hair was a little off or lopsided, she would just smile and say she knew and had a giant chunk of hair come from nowhere to fill it in.  She's also giving me my post wedding chop but thats another story for another time.  She also told Matron of Honor M to "not ruin her masterpiece" and how to easily remove my veil.  It seriously lost only one bobby pin the whole night and had 2 little escape curls throughout the day.

After hair, I sat with Carmen who did an amazing job on my makeup.  The five girls in my bridal party all had their makeup and hair done too so when I wrapped up, I took 3 with me while the other 2 had their final touches done.  Let me tell you, for this stress monster, I was cool as a cucumber when we were getting ready.  Seriously.  No nerves.  All awesome.  I got dressed with no issue, was more curious about what everyone else was doing than focusing on the wedding, had a really great prep photo session with the photographer and it was all smooth sailing.  When Sandi finished shooting (amazing amazing A-MAZ-ING photographer btw), the parents left and the girls and I waited for the fun to begin.  The limo showed up about 40 minutes before the wedding, we all hustled into the limo and just waited since the church was only 5 minutes away.  That's when the nervousness set in.  I won't go into detail but my nerves mess with my stomach which involved completely escaping my dress (about half an hour of unlacing and re-lacing) and we got to the church about 3 minutes after the processional was supposed to start.

Back to the Drill

Today was my first day of a normal 44 hour week in...I honestly can't remember how long.  Tim was off today and being the awesome husband he is, he texted me around lunch time asking what I wanted for lunch.  So he made me a sandwich (even weighed my meat and everything for tracking) and me, being the awesome wife that I am, decided that in reply to opening the apartment door and his greeting of "Hi, honey!" that it would be an awesome idea to say "Where's my sammich woman?!"  It went over about as well as expected.  I will give him credit though...he made my lunch, did some shopping and wrote his schedule on my dry erase board so I don't have to ask him a million times when he's going to be home.

I'm having a huge mental conflict about moving.  I think I had this the last time I moved too.  I know the finances will work themselves out (hardcore budgeter here) but right now I'm just so concerned.  I'm kind of notorious about living within my means.  Always.  Knock on wood, other than whatever I haven't paid off from last month yet, I don't have any debts or credit card interest.  Tim just has his truck loan which we're hoping that he can pay off in the next month.  Its just scary joining finances... especially since he owns his own business and his pay is not set and consistent like mine.  Let's just say it doesn't make me long for my freelancing again to say the least!  So a heavy duty spending month for us next month!  We have:

-October rent due for this apartment 10/1 (literally put the check in the mail tonight)
-mid-October rent (about half) due approx 10/15 (final move in date TBD)
-new rent (full) due 11/1
-3 truck payments for Tim
-credit card balances due by 10/20
-a new bed for the new apartment (squeezing 2 adults in a full bed has definitely not been pretty)

Plus all the other fun odds and ends that come with a move.  November I'm co-hosting a bachelorette party (probably in Atlantic City) and then December brings lots of Christmas shopping and the honeymoon.  Not to mention MY BIRTHDAY (I don't think I'll ever be one of those women that's too old to love her birthday).  So I will be very thankful when January comes around and we can finally start building our savings back up.  I'm hoping that we can get some new furniture for the new place too...I think all we'll need will be bar stools, a couch (maybe chairs too) and the bed as far as big pieces of furniture.  Bookcases and those sorts of things are much easier to get wherever without a ton of thought (I'm not worried about super nice expensive pieces until we're in a house and not moving things every other year).

I guess this girl should probably get to bed since there's another 9 hour day waiting for me in...nope, not even going to count the hours.  Its too tragic.  Good night world!

Sunday Wine Down

Its officially been a week since Tim moved in.  In that time we've moved him in, unpacked and started repacking.  Right now about 90% of the wedding presents are packaged up, the first of our moving boxes have been packed.  We made a $400 shopping trip at Walmart the other day (crazy right?!) to get a few odds and ends for the apartment plus finally restocking the fridge.  To say the least, we won't be hungry at least for a week or two.  Tonight Tim cooked the chicken that I marinated a few nights ago, I cut up and repackaged some chicken for the freezer for future dinners and am now enjoying catching up on Necessary Roughness and enjoying a glass of Pinot Noir.  Tim on the other hand appears to be watching a video game play through with a giant panda.  I'm not even going to pretend that I understand...

So pinot noir.  Good stuff.  I tend to be more of a whites girl myself, but we had a few bottles leftover from the wedding so I thought it would be nice to work on this wine while working on winding down tonight.  I can say that it was AWFUL with my balsamic vinegar couscous...seriously like licking black pepper (Tim said black pepper and mud so yeah...not good).  On the other hand, we had a left over s'more cookies from the wedding...pinot noir and chocolate are apparently amazing together.  It was good with a graham cracker too.  If I hadn't used up all my calories today (even including my walk), I would totally attempt it with some of my rum & raisin goat cheese but maybe I'll do that tomorrow. There's just enough for another small glass or two left in the bottle so we'll see how I feel at the end of the day.  I am kind of regretting not having taken a bit of a longer walk now to have tried it today.  Just kidding.  I realized my brain and stomach were not on the same page and the stomach would not be happy until it tried it....AMAZING.  So the Ropiteau Pinot Noir and the Goat's Milk Rum Raisin is to die for!  Oh and for what its worth the Rich & Buttery Brie was fantastic too but definitely not what I want with this wine.

Zonked

Today was a long, busy day for the Hamiltons.  We kicked off the day going to a Weight Watcher's meeting (just 2 pounds from goal and I managed to stay in my healthy range that last week before the wedding and lost an additional 1.4 lbs).  Then we grabbed breakfast at Wawa and began making our way North.  Tim stopped for a quick appointment and then we kept trucking to pick up my Matron of Honor dress for my friend A's wedding in December.  We grabbed an AMAZING pizza at Bertucci's and then did some quick shopping and drove the 2 hours back home.  Some days I really miss living in a true suburban area and don't like living in such a rural place.  It was just so nice to be able to walk down a row of stores and get everything that we needed (plus a few things that we didn't).  After all that (almost 10 hours since leaving the apartment), I ended up taking about a 20 minute cat nap and could still probably call it a night.  Tomorrow should be a nice relaxing day.  I don't think we have anything planned except for packing up boxes.  We're just about at the 3 week countdown although its a little unnerving that I've given my landlord my notice but haven't gotten the official move in date.  Even if our move in date is pushed back a few days, we'll be fine because I left us a 15 day buffer with the landlord (if we can move earlier, its just that much more time to make sure this place is really cleaned up and to get back as much of the deposit as possible).  I can't believe that I'm moving again.  By the time that I'm out, I will have lived here for a year and a half.  We're not sure that we'll stay at the next place for more than a year but we'll have to take it as it goes.  I swear every time I get a bruise or knock something over from it being so cramped in this apartment, my mantra is "2 bedrooms....1295 square feet....3 weeks...I can do this."

So Thursday Tim came to work to meet quite a few of the coworkers.  For an office known for pulling pranks, I was a little bit concerned when they said that they had a "special surprise for us."  It truly was a very special surprise though.  We had registered for a few oddball items during our wedding registry process...some were ungodly things to dream about...including a $400 wine bar.  Now I'm sure you just read that and went "No way, you got a $400 wine bar?!"  NOPE!  They pulled funds together and got me a custom made wine bar that is almost identical to the one that we registered for, except made with solid wood throughout instead of chipboard.  It was so sweet and unexpected.  It will be perfect to house all our leftover wedding wine and the awesome decanter that my friend C gave us for our wedding.

Two bedrooms.  1295 square feet.  3 weeks.

A new start

I've attempted blogging several times and to be honest I'm not sure this time will be any different.  I do miss keeping sort of a log as to how things are going and sort of a record to look back on.

This is truly a new start for so many reasons.  I just got married this past weekend to my amazing husband Tim.  We're a little old school so despite the fact that we dated for 5 years, we've never lived together.  We're almost a week into living together and although its been a little bit of an adjustment, I feel like its going pretty well considering that we're living in my 1 bedroom 700some square foot apartment.  Next month we will be moving into a 1295 square foot apartment *cue the Alleluia choir* with two bedrooms, a bigger kitchen and a HUGE balcony.  We really can't wait.

So the title of this blog...where to begin.  I'm not the world's most fit (or unfit) person.  I tend to yoyo between hardcore eating well and working out to being a bit of a couch potato.  Tim and I are big wine drinkers and while not much makes me WANT to exercise, if I know that there's wine as a possibility (or something I really want to eat) I will definitely take a massive walk to counteract the calories.  So this is it...my little blog.  I won't guarantee posting regularly or even what I'll be posting about.  I do hope that I am able to keep up with it and generally keep a good record of our going ons as well as projects around the apartment.