America...

You knew it had to be done!

So it's the calm before the storm...tomorrow I go to Korea for a night before I head back to the motherland...'Murica!  For those that haven't lived in the remoteness that is Misawa...it's cheaper to hop on a military flight to Korea and THEN fly over to America, rather than leave from Japan.  I have no idea why, other than Japan is expensive.

Anyways, just wanted to let you know.  I will have plenty of updates then, because the first days I'm there are going to be me, in Milwaukee, trying to fit something like 3 months' worth of appointments and tastings, etc, into less than 3 days.  Should make for an interesting blog post or two...

Until then, wish me safe travels!!!

Bearing the Rings

Today I got a new wedding pretty!

I am actually pretty stoked about this.  A long time ago I started noticing these pretty bowls popping up on the wedding blogosphere:

image via Etsy shop Paloma's Nest

I automatically loved them, but wasn't sure what we were doing for our ring bearer yet.  The idea of having a toddler out there in a tux is adorable, but useless.  Sorry, but you know it's true!  So I tucked the idea away for a rainy day.  Some time later, I ran across this post and this post from Mrs. Hippo on Wedding Bee.  You can read the details of why she wanted it, but for my purposes...I just really liked the idea.  Also--that makes having a ring bearer a functional necessity.  Yay!  If you can't tell, sometimes I really hate the idea of doing something just because it's what you do for weddings.  It's gonna be the underlying theme of this post.

SO.  In the last few weeks, I've been shopping for accessories and wedding whatnots, which means I live on Etsy.  Pretty much.  Also because Jason's gone.  I had marked Paloma's Nest as one of my favorite shops, and decided I should check out what's new on there.  Mystical forces at work, my friends, because I ran across this new love of mine...

Description!

They certainly knew how to get me with this--"limited edition" and "only 2 left" might've swayed my decision to buy it. I'm fairly certain I could've DIY'd it somewhat successfully, but advertising won out and I decided to buy vs. make.  The other downfall is that the only personalization available on this bowl was the year we're getting married...but no matter.  I love it anyways.  For the wedding, I think my nephew will be our ring bearer...he's what, 14ish now?  And he can pass the ring around with our rings tied up safely.  I think it'll be great for the guests to be able to touch the rings and this bowl is obviously the perfect size for your hand!  Another reason I love it is because it can be functional after the wedding.  I almost always take my ring off at night (otherwise I wake up with painful creases on my face where I managed to lay on my left hand...), and this gives me something beautiful to put it in!  A pillow can't give me that....
Now, it's gratuitous picture time!

Nozzle's not impressed.

I'm pretty proud of this decision!  Also, I recommend Paloma's Nest bowls to anyone...they're as gorgeous in person as they are in the pictures!!!

Sneaky Sneaky

Sneak peak of what I'm working on today....

Yep, that's a whole lot of kraft in there.  Not real descriptive, but I think you guys are smart.  You know what this is, and you know you're not gonna get to see everything before I send them out.  I am feeling benevolent though, so I'll show you what might be my favorite part of the invite suites.

moo.

mini business cards from MOO

Just because they're cute, that's why.  

All my favorite pictures from the e sesh on one side...

...wedding website on the other!  Not gonna lie...Chiyo chan is missing
(she ran away on Friday) and looking at this almost made me cry :(

I will have more on these once I get to Vegas (!) and see if I can get my paws on a white ink pad and a printer to do offset printing for me...

How We Chose our Date

So.  Quite a few of my military-associated friends run across this question:  "Which date do you celebrate?"  It's a tough question!  Jason and I will have 3 dates:
30 October 2010--we started dating
24 June 2011--we were legally married
27 October 2012--the fun, Catholic, big wedding date

To me, the date that we were "established" is 2010.  As exemplified by the sign I had made:

I pretty much knew I wanted to commit to us then, and it's the most important date to me.  Of course, I celebrate the others too, but this will always be my favorite and most important anniversary.  SO, of course it was important to me to have our big wedding date coincide as.closely.as.possible to our 2010 date.  Beau was game for it, and a possible deployment made it even more of a reality.  The 30th is a Tuesday this year, so we definitely weren't going to have it then.  We settled on the 27th...it was worth the extra money to have a Saturday wedding for many reasons:
1. So people could get into town without taking crazy days off of work
2.  So people could recover on Sunday and possibly make it back home then
3.  Because a Tuesday wedding would suck.  Duh.

I'm excited to have our wedding close to our two year "dating" anniversary!  We'll be in Tahiti on that day this year!