Getting closer – Only 74 more days!

A lot has happened since our last post. I’ll try my best to fit everything in :).

We did register for gifts finally after being pestered by some family and friends, haha. It was actually a lot of fun. We registered online at first but when we went to the stores to finish we realized that a lot of the gifts we registered for were “Online Only”. We had to remove most of them from our registries and add similar gifts that are available in the store. In the process we about doubled our registry. It’s very addicting to keep scanning! Please refer to our Gift Registry page if you’d like some more information.

A little over a month ago we went to a Sweet 16 in Tampa to preview some of the audio/visual options provided by our DJs. Before I go into what interested us for the wedding let me tell you that this Sweet 16 could’ve been on MTV! It was INSANE! There were over 500 guests attending. The girl had divided her Sweet 16 into two rooms: Heaven & Hell. The Heaven room was pretty blues with nice decor, food, drinks, snacks, music, etc. The Hell room was more like a night club with large video screens, state of the art lighting & sound, and a huge dance floor. We got to this event hours before it started just to discuss some options with our DJs. We were both VERY impressed with what they did at this event. You’re not lucky enough to find out what we’re actually doing for our wedding, though. You’ll just have to wait another two months :).

We’ve also had our menu/cake tasting and decor preview @ A La Carte a few weeks ago. We were both very pleased with this entire evening. They brought in a lighting tech and lots of lighting options to show us all of the possibilities. We also got to preview our table linens, chair covers, chair ties, etc. I think the best part was the food, however. The menu and cake tasting blew us away! The entrees and cake were absolutely delicious. We firmed up our menu and decided on our cake design, flavor, fililng, and topping. It was good to get this taken care of. The more we can cross off the list the better at this point. While we were there we also previewed some additional decor options which we really liked. We’ve gotten pricing on them but aren’t too sure we’ll be able to afford it all just yet.

We also went to A La Carte about 2 weeks ago to see the decor for another wedding they were having. We weren’t very impressed with the decor that this couple picked out, but it was good to see some other options. We did get some ideas from their event, just not a whole lot.

We alsooooo met with our Officient about a month ago. He’s very down to earth and completely understands what we’re looking for in our ceremony. He even recommended a good book for newlyweds, haha. Buffy and I bought a copy for each of us and have already started reading it. Maybe we’ll be pros when we’re done — maybe not, haha.

Invitations went out Monday morning. If you haven’t gotten yours already you’ll be getting it very soon! We’re excited to start getting the responses. We’ll see whose comes back first :).

Buffy’s shower is coming up in a few weeks. I know she’s excited about that! She’s going to Orlando with the bridemaides that same weekend and I’m going to Key West with my groomsmen (all but Steve Maki since he’s deployed). It should be a fun and busy weekend!

Sorry for going on for so long but there was a LOT to update everyone about! We can’t wait to see everyone in November. We can’t believe it’s only 2 months away!

Hotel Block Secured!

Hi everyone,

Thanks for checking back in with us! Our apologies for not updating more often. We’ve had a lot going on and have been dealing with a lot of details which aren’t that exciting to report.

I’m going to try and keep this as short and simple as possible, but I’m sure you all know that is all but impossible for me (Shawn), but here we go:

We’ve secured a block of rooms @ the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay for our guests. For more information please visit our Lodging page. We got a reduced rate of $129 a night, which is quite a bit cheaper than the $179 per night rates I found online. This was about as affordable as we could find that was still an up-scale property and close to A La Carte. It took a little longer than we had hoped to get the rooms secured, but unfortunately it took a bunch of phone calls and follow-ups to get it all done.

We’re still in the process of ordering our invitations. Originally we had to try and figure out how we were going to address each invitation seeing we were told that there was no interior envelope. After debating numerous solutions we finally found out that there is an interior envelope. Wish we would’ve known that initially, but we’re happy nonetheless. We should have a revised proof in the next few days so we can place our order. There will be lots of writing to do when we get those in! Better get ready Shell! 🙂 Buffy gets out of all the writing since her handwriting isn’t very neat.

We’ve set a goal to pick out our officiant this week. This is the only vendor we haven’t decided on yet. A La Carte has recommended a few of them so we’re going to give them a call and see who we feel the most comfortable with. I think this will be a pretty easy decision but I’m not holding my breath! One of the officiants recommended by A La Carte we were told was very contemporary so we’re going to try him first. Neither of us are very religious so we’re really just looking for someone who has a good vibe and can get the job done nicely, but quickly as well, haha.

Buffy’s picked out the flower girl dresses! We can’t wait to see Emily & Jamie in their cute dresses! They’re going to be so cute! Charlie (the ring bearer) is going to be in the same tux that Shawn and the groomsmen are wearing. Hopefully we’ll get some good photos of them! Fortunately, Buffy had a fairly easy time picking out the flower girl dresses. They found one they liked right away and decided to just go with it instead of going crazy looking all over the place.

Our coordinator @ A La Carte contacted us a few weeks ago to schedule a cake tasting date! That is DEFINITELY something we are both looking forward to! We haven’t actually set the date yet because we were waiting on them to release their July dates. We’ll most likely be on a sugar high after the tasting so we should have enough energy to update the blog.

There’s been some good and bad news about our 2 groomsmen who are in the military. Steve Maki’s schedule got changed while he was visiting us in Florida a little over a month ago and it looks like he’s going to be deployed now for our wedding. He says there’s a possibility that they will allow him to train somebody else to go in his place but he won’t know until the last minute most likely. It’s unfortunate, but we know he wants to be at our wedding as much as we want him to be. Unfortunately he can’t quit the Navy :), but we’re keeping our fingers crossed. Another groomsman, Jason Parrish, looks like he’ll be getting back from Iraq in August now, a few months earlier than he had originally anticipated. Nothing is set in stone, obviously, and we’re not holding our breath, but it’d be great if he really did get home then. We all miss him a ton! So keep your fingers crossed too and hopefully both of these great friends of ours will be able to attend the wedding!

I can’t think of anything else there is to tell everyone about right now. I sure hope I haven’t forgotten anything.  Just a little over 5 months to go! It’s going by quick!

Wedding bands… CHECK!

Hope everybody is doing well. We went out yesterday and purchased our wedding bands! Finally, something else we can check off of the list. We had found 2 that each of us liked at 2 different stores a few months ago. We decided to go out yesterday to make a decision and buy them so we could just be done with them. We ended up getting Buff’s @ Jared and Shawn’s @ Gordon’s. We’re both very happy with what we got and can’t wait to start wearing them!

Not a whole lot has been going on in regards to the wedding besides that recently. We’re still waiting to get a contract from our DJs so we can get that done, and we’re still waiting on our detailed quote from A La Carte. Hopefully we’ll get those soon. We’re going to *try* our best to secure a block of rooms at a hotel this week for our guests to stay at the night of the wedding, and before and after for those that choose. I know some of you may have been worried after checking the prices for some of the hotels we’re considering. Rest assured we will be selecting the one that has the best price and can provide shuttle transportation to and from the wedding for our guests who wish to drink and not drive. We’ve found some other hotels in the area as well which are still nice (although not as nice as what we’ve already found) so if we have to we’ll be checking those as well. For those of you who will be traveling via air and staying in the hotel we’ve heard that there were some good package prices @ http://www.cheaptickets.com. We haven’t had the chance to look into these ourselves, but that’s just what we’ve heard from some other guests who have already looked into booking their trip. We highly suggest everybody utilize a site such as http://www.kayak.com. They scour a whole bunch of travel sites and report on the best pricing and options for airfare, hotels, rental cars, etc. We *always* use http://www.kayak.com when we travel.

One last thing — we’ve setup a mailing list to let all of you know when we’ve posted a new blog, updated our web site, or have new information regarding our wedding! If you’d like to sign-up, please just email Shawn (shawn@itistic.com) and let him know! We’re going to go ahead and add everybody we already have email addresses for, but we certainly don’t have everybody’s, so even if you don’t want to sign-up to the email list, go ahead and shoot Shawn (shawn@itistic.com) an email to let him know your email address and phone number! It’ll help us keep our contact list for the wedding as complete as possible.

Thanks to everybody for coming back to the site and following our progress!

Our meeting w/ A La Carte Tuesday night

Well, as you may have saw mentioned on our home page, the meeting went great! We are so pleased with our event coordinator and the decor manager there! They had a ton of great ideas that we really liked. We were both a bit afraid that they’d be trying to up-sell us on a bunch of stuff we really can’t afford, but they actually were quite the opposite. Although they did make a lot of good points about things we should purchase, they also made suggestions of things we can do to get away from purchasing upgrades. We even found out that some of the lighting I was concerned about is exactly included in our package! Gotta love THAT! Like I said, all in all, we’re both extremely pleased. We’re having them put together a quote that includes anything and everything we want. We won’t be able to afford it all, but hopefully most of it ;). The decor manager also had a really neat idea that we’re hoping we can work in, so we’re excited about THAT too! It’s going to take them approximately 4 weeks to complete the quote. We were very proactive in getting this stuff taken care of now and not closer to our wedding, so we think they probably have other quotes and things to finish for weddings which are much sooner. I’ll probably post an update as soon as we get it, though.

Not a whole lot going on besides that. Our web site traffic has been steadily increasing now that everybody is starting to receive our Save the Date magnets. It’s fun to watch visitors from new states everyday. Kind of lets us know when the Save the Dates are arriving.

We’ve gotten a little further with booking a DJ. We’re 99% sure who we’re going to use, we just have to work out a few minor details. We’re going to probably remit our deposit for that in the next few days I’d think.

Buffy really wants to get our wedding bands purchased and taken care of too. We’ve found some we like @ two different jewelry stores. It’s been hard for me to find one I like because I’m just not used to wearing rings. Most of them look too feminine for me. There’s one that I like, but it’s kind of pricey, and I’m not sure if I should go with it or just buy a simple band and save some $$$.

I think that’s about all we have going on right now on the Wedding front. Thanks to everybody for your comments on our guest book! Hope everyone has a great weekend, and happy Easter!

— Shawn

Tomorrow’s a big day!

It’s a little late so I don’t have a lot of time. We got our Save The Date mailer out today! Bigger news – we’re meeting with A La Carte tomorrow to start picking out all of the decor for the wedding! We’re both really excited about this. I think I’m most excited about picking out the lighting, but we’ll see what we can (and can’t) afford. Once we’re through with our meeting tomorrow evening we should also be able to make a decision on a DJ. That’s really the only major vendor we still have to decide on. Well, we haven’t chosen a videographer yet, but we’re not too sure what we’re going to do there. We kind of splurged on our photographer so we may have to sacrifice a video.

Happy St. Patty’s Day to everyone! Stay tuned — we promise to keep this updated! We’d love to hear your comments, too, so please don’t be shy!

— Shawn