Guest Book: Nope

During this weekend's great wedding debate, Mr. T and I decided to do away with the guest book. We can't imagine ever looking at it again, and we think the entries, although sweet and sincere, end up sounding identical and remniscent of high school yearbook entries. We thought it just wasn't worth the money.
So, there you go. We did cut something.

Review of Shadow Kiss

Just a quickie review; I'm about 4 books behind! Note: Spoilers ahead!

This is the third in the series and was way better than the second. Rose finally hooks up with Dimitri, who promptly dies...but not really. She figures out he's been turned into an undead, so the end of the book shows her dropping out of school to track down and stake her ex-lover. Romantic, huh?

In this book Rose also realizes that she's taking on Lissa's madness when Lissa uses her powers. That realization certainly took long enough, but you can't complain when you read YA fiction, I guess. Yet I persist.

It was fun and trashy and a really quick read. And everyone knows vampires are the new black, right?

I think I found our ring pillow!

I found this on Etsy. Cute, huh? We also have a bat flower girl bucket, so this would fit right in.
The seller had a bride pillow too, but this one looks so much more dashing...if a bat can look dashing.

More List Woes

This weekend I made an actual personalized to-do list for me and Mr. T. I know, it's long overdue, but we were getting by using the lists in our various wedding books. However, it became obvious that not only are we unusual in terms of the normal wedding in terms of what we're NOT doing, we're also unusual in that some of the things we ARE doing were nowhere on these lists. And I started to get worried that if I didn't get all that stuff out of my head and into a list, I'd forget something at some point.

So, I sat down and spent a good hour or two creating a list that had well over 100 things on it--more like 140! Mr. T and I promptly started bickering as he tried to eliminate things ("Do we need favors?") and I tried to keep them on there. Sigh. There's definitely a not-so-pretty side to wedding planning, and its name is stress. I admitted to Mr. T that my stomach has been hurting every night for the last week, and I think it's wedding-related. He told me he'd been feeling the same way. As it is, since we only have 4 months (OMG FOUR MONTHS) until the wedding, so our list would seem to have us doing more than two things per day, which realistically is never going to happen. But we're keeping everything on it for now.

The list did motivate us to check off a few tasks; I booked our photographer's flight, and Mr. T started legwork on the alcohol quantities and the mini-moon. I told him I don't want to know anything about the mini-moon; I just want it to be luxurious and I want at least one massage. Despite my protests, he's told me that he's considering Big Sur, but I stopped him before he could get any further with the information disclosure. Really, after planning this wedding, I have zero desire to plan anything after the wedding! I just want to show up and be pampered!

The other super-fun task we did was sit down with the budget to find out what the heck was going on--my reconciliations showed a difference between our spreadsheet and what the bank statement was actually telling us. Sadly, the bank was right (as I figured they would be!); I'd misplaced a decimal point in one entry and entered two entries twice! This is why I work in publishing, not accounting...anyway, we're not done saving money, as we'd hoped, but we're pretty close.

We are still looking for rehearsal dinner venues, and are leaning toward Chinese or Vietnamese, because they're local and have banquet rooms. And, we eat a lot of both, so they reflect our style and aren't random choices.

Next weekend I made it our goal to register and also to go suit shopping, part two. It's a three-day weekend, so hopefully we can get both done! The clock is ticking...

OMW Week 26; WW Week 16

I lost one pound this week, making a total of 21 pounds! While it's better than gaining, I feel like whatever momentum I had has evaporated...I guess it's one of those "plateaus" as they say.

Anyway, I persevere...I even got up earlier this morning so I could pick up my rings on the way to work!

Mr. T has also lost weight, not from dieting exactly, but from eating better and of course from the morning workouts. We're leaning more toward 4 times a week these days. Both of us are drying our jeans in the dryer so we can take advantage of the temporary shrinkage!

Bling: Check!

I got my beloved e-ring back today! I forgot how sparkly it is. I really need to use the jewelry cleaner more often, apparently. I can't stop looking at it!

In other exciting news, I also picked up my wedding band!!! Hooray! The rings look awesome together, in my humble opinion. The MOH said, "You know you have to put that away until the wedding, right?"

I told her she couldn't make me. And here they are together; please excuse the crappy iPhone pic and the chipped black nailpolish!

Review of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

I read about this book on Wedding Bee and figured it was worth checking out. Look at me, I'm turning into a new-age self-help addict or something! Yeah, probably not.

Actually, I quite enjoyed the book and am considering actually buying it! It was well-written, and came at relationships in a different way than I've heard about before.

Basically, the authors have studied thousands of couples (and you hear about how they've done these studies many times...I know the academic way is to prove you've done your homework, but sheesh, we get it already) and figured out what the couples with successful relationships were doing differently than the ones with unhappy relationships. It's not whether you yell while you're fighting, or even if you communicate about every single thing, which I thought was interesting.

I don't remember all seven principles (because I'm so behind on book reviews, and at this point it's been awhile since I've read this book!), but the first one was knowing your partner--their background and interests, and then staying up to date on what's going on in their lives. There are little activities for you to complete with your partner, so I asked Mr. T one of the questions as we were laying in bed one night: "Where was I born?" and he had no idea! We laughed and laughed. Mr. T was joking that he'd failed on the first question, which of course wasn't true. It's actually nice to think there are things we can still learn about each other after nearly 12 years!

Anyway, even though I'm lame and can't remember all the principles, I do think I'll buy this one and I recommend this book highly, to anyone who's curious about improving their relationship or keeping it strong. And you know I can't stand most self-help books, so that's saying something!