Night at the 'rents

So we went over to my parents house last night to try and briefly talk some wedding stuff, and pick up some of the yummy leftovers from our Christmas Eve Polish feast, Wigilia ( Vee - gi - lee - uh).  We discussed all sorts of things, from venues to guest lists to the reception and music.  Were down to a tentative guest list and a handful of dates.  (10/2/10, 10/23/10, 11/6/10) are the contenders at the moment.   We also decided to make a bank account for the wedding and probably get some sort of credit card where we can earn airline miles.   This way we stay on a hard budget and can each put in a portion of our monthly earnings according to a plan. 
We ended up chatting about my parents' wedding for a while too.  They remember it fondly but also remember a bunch of stuff that went wrong.  It poured rain on their wedding day, there was some culture clash from family to family ( Inner-city Chicago vs. midwest smallish town), and they constantly say that they didn't know what they were doing. However they still look back with big smiles on their faces and laughing about it all, good and bad.  It helps me put things in perspective that things will probably be crazy, and not everything will pan out but it will likely still be a bright spot in our memory. 
We ended up at my parents place basically the whole night, losing track of time, but it was a fun night of planning and useful too.  We also picked up a pizza on the way there and demolished it in front of my parents.  We also not only forgot the leftovers from Wigilia, but left a bottle of Monical's French dressing there.  Then, since we wound up staying basically the whole night didn't have time to do any sort of exercise.  I guess the whole getting healthy thing starts today, lol.  I'm gonna try to  force Jeni on the Wii Fit Plus tonight.  Maybe I'll go running tonight too.  Me and my high hopes. 
I feel kinda bad because Jeni has been doing wedding stuff all the time, and I'm probably not pulling my weight quite.  We have a lotta time still though. 

45 min incubation

Well we announced the engagement officially on facebook. I also extended an invite to a bunch of my friends to view the blog so.....Welcome new readers.

I am currently at work (I'm so bad) and during this lull of an incubation step decided to do some wedding things. I am trying to find a few sites that Dan and I can maybe look at next week. If only to peek our heads in some of the buildings. Don't know if these places are open during the holiday weekend and in addition we only have a few days. To list a few of the potentials...
The Memorial Union (Wisconsin main Union)
Olbrich Botanical Gardens
The Orpheum Theatre
The Overture Center for the Arts

All these locations are sorta "please let it not be booked so my location can be cool." I'm kinda hopeful that people with long engagements haven't taken all the good spots. I also want a reception hall that can accommodate the ceremony. I like the thought of staying in one place. It just seems easier for everyone. Also if I can, I want to stay away from hotels. Not that there is anything wrong with them but I just want some place with a little more flare.

Anyway better attend to the locations so I can print off the information and have Dan and I pour over the details tonight. I guess I kinda have to work too. LOL

Planning Hour

So today Dan and I set a side some time to hammer out some wedding details. We think we have a tentative guest list, well the people we could think of. Our parents are still preparing their lists and so then we can combine and see what final number we have. I also spent some time on the phone with one of my engaged friends (Shannon) asking some advise.

What we've decided so far. I am kinda sure that I would like to have a real wedding dress. I have been looking online and in some magazines and have decided on a general style. I really like the bust waist and thick shoulder straps with some detail on the top of the dress. I'm not quite sure about the lower half, that I will decide as I try some dresses on.

I also got a great idea from Shannon, that if the pictures are taken before the ceremony than a cocktail hour can be the greeting time followed by dinner and dancing. Remember ----> bride is dancing all night. Also I'm prolly going to have Dan shop for the gown anyway so I won't need to hide on that day.

Other than that we prepared an online album of our 12 days of Christmas gifts and emailed my family. I guess we can officially announce the engagement on facebook in the next coming days.

http://picasaweb.google.com/dan.hoeflinger/12Days?feat=directlink

I just want to welcome any readers who may venture to this site. *Hi and hope you enjoy.

Merry Christmas!

So we told my grandparents today and they were super excited.  However it seems that I am the only one who didn't think I was long overdue to ask her.  I guess that means I picked a good one *grin*.   We also told a them and my parents about this blog, so maybe people other than us will start reading it.  I'm trying to decide whether that is exciting or scary.
It was a good day and I'm glad the holidays are finally over.  I've been to busy to get down to reading any of the books we got but I'm gonna buckle down this weekend and get to work.   I'll try to keep my cookie eating to a minimum too.
Ill try out my Wii Fit Plus tomorrow and get some reading in.

So many cookies!!

Dan and I are trying to follow a to do list from theknot.com which advises us to start taking better care of ourselves. I don't think they accounted for the people who get engaged over Christmas. Luckily, for Dan and I we have some good and hungry roommates to help us devourer the plethora of goodies we got this Christmas.

Of course the wedding is still months away so we can indulge a little, right? ;)

I'm Dreaming of a Rainy Christmas?

Not many updates or changes to wedding plans as yesterday was Christmas Eve and we didn't think about it too much. We did have a great night over at Dan's parents house and made the announcement. We are going to see his Grandparents today and will let them in on the good news.

So about the title. I can't believe that at 3am this morning I was awoken by a hurricane. I kinda thought it was Winter and I live in IL. I'm just hoping that the rain will settle down but perhaps stay warm enough so it doesn't turn to ice. That would not be fun.

Anyway time to wrap this up and get ready for the day. Merry Christmas blog world and perhaps someone other than Dan will read this soon.

A Very Early Morning

Well here I am. My first post on this blog that my great fiancé prepared late last night while I slept. I was awoken by my alarm clock (I forgot to turn it off) at 6:30 am. Alarm clocks should really get smarter and know its Christmas Eve.

So this is my day one gift and while it doesn't seem like a gift, just think of it like a journal. A great place for Dan and I to chronicle all our thoughts no matter how embarrassing.

The little story I will tell you this morning is about my fingers. Ugh is all I can say. I am still very new to wearing jewelry but I already feel naked when I take off my ring. It seems like there are so many occasions in which I can't wear it.

The big one is work. I am a scientist and am constantly in and out of gloves which are meant to protect me and my work. Therefore, I don't wear my ring because the prongs could put a hole in the glove basically compromising the safety aspect of the glove. So I had an idea, stolen from Sex and the City, where I could put the ring on a necklace during the day. It works very well and the jeweler sold us a rubber necklace so it won't ruin the ring.

I also have been hesitant to wear it during hygiene practices. I'm not sure how much soap will affect the diamond or the metal (Palladium) and so I'm being careful and taking it off. Don't worry drains are carefully being watched. I don't want Dan to do any drain searching just yet.

My ring is also very precious to me and I put it in the box while I sleep. I wouldn't want to accidentally take out Dan's eye while I sleep. I'm kind of a bed hog and have a potential weapon on my finger, both could spell disaster when done at the same time.

The last but slightly unavoidable is that my fingers get fat at night. When I say fat I mean it. My ring doesn't fit when I get up. Though it does fit perfectly just a little later. Dan and I were very worried yesterday and so we looked it up and saw that it is normal and that I just have to wait. I'm going to try not to force it on and so more time without it on.

Luckily with all of these times it sits or hangs somewhere other than my finger it really doesn't matter. I love my ring and trust me I look at it to make me feel happy but that is because someone gave it to me. The symbol of the love Dan and I have is present whether the ring is on my finger or sitting in the box, a great realization to have as I look over at Dan catching a few extra bits of sleep this morning.

In closing this has been a great Christmas so far. The others to come may not be filled with the the excitement of an engagement but will be just as great. As long as I have Dan at my side I will be utterly happy.

Its a lot to take in, but we help each other through.

Yesterday I was looking at some stuff on TheKnot.com after a suggestion from Jeni.  I found a monthly to-do list and budget.  The to-do list was about three full screen scrolls down the page, and it freaked me out a little, and that was only for this first month.  I didn't really bother to read much after the first few items, but it was still a bit scary.  I also looked over their suggested budget. It was pretty informative, but all this combined with a somewhat bad day at work left me pretty overwhelmed.  I showed Jeni this stuff later and she proved to me that it was manageable.  Most of the stuff on the list was either just "start thinking about..." or was stuff we don't plan on having.   That made me feel a lot better.
Today we picked up a few wedding books and magazines while Christmas shopping.  Jeni was looking over them tonight and got somewhat overwhelmed.  After some chatting and some callbacks from a few friends (where she broke the news!!) she seems a lot calmer.
I think that we are generally pretty good at calming down and comforting each other.  This should come in handy down the road.

She still doesn't know about this blog, it's going to be her day one gift from me.  I don't know if it really qualifies as a gift but I hope it will help us out a lot and hopefully will help us keep ourselves grounded.  I plan to try and spruce up this blog a bit and make it as nice as I can.  All she will have to do is help me in posting periodically. I'll try to get her to post tomorrow and introduce herself.

PS.
During this post I got the idea to make an ideas list (thats pretty meta) for the reception or ceremony so we can keep track of things easily.  I really want a slide there.  I think that it would be awesome, please let the venue not be paranoid about liability.

Introduction

Mostly for our own sake, I want to set out the purpose of this blog, and what I hope it will become:

1) I want to record this experience because its an event and time in our lives that will be unlike anything else.

2) I want a place for us to come to express our joy, excitement, frustration, worry, overwhelmedness, elation, nervousness and love.

3) I want a place to organize our planning resources and keep useful links, blogs, information, pictures handy and accessible from anywhere.

4) I want a motivation to keep on planning, and progress steadily, so we don't get surprised by the day when it comes.

5) I want to record this experience with bad and good, so it can be useful or entertaining to whomever could benefit. 

These are my ambitious goals. Pardon our dust while we get things started here.  We're mostly just going to record our experiences and see what, if anything, comes of it.   I'm as new to blogging as I am to weddings, so we should be in for a ride. 

We're Engaged! Beginning of an Adventure

I asked her, and she said yes!  Well I knew she was going to say yes, but I was still nervous when I got down on one knee.  It felt like one of those life defining moments that you want to make perfect while in them.  Of course it wasn't perfect, and I'm sure I looked silly to just about anyone except for Jeni.   I could do the stupidest thing in the world and she would still adore me through it.

So heres how I did it:

Were doing a twelve days of Christmas gift idea where we give each other gifts according to the number of the day.  Were also doing it backwards from twelve to one and ending up on Christmas eve.  I know, I know its supposed to be one to twelve from Christmas to the Epiphany but we didn't know that, and it gave it some more suspense this way.  I gave her a twelve track CD on day twelve, she gave me a Sodoku puzzle on day nine.   To take some of the pressure, and financial burden off, we bought a bag of M + Ms together so that any day we didn't have something we could put that number of M+Ms in a ziploc bag as the gift, dubbed affectionately "fail days".

Shes been expecting a proposal for months, and I knew she would expect it on day one.  However, day one would be far too expected.  On day five, I packed four plastic vending machine rings into one of the bubbles that they used to come in.  I don't know if you can still get these in vending machines, but I found some.  After opening the bubble, she started taking the rings out and putting them on her fingers.  Preparing for the picture that we have been taking with our presents each morning.  When she got to the third ring, she realized that there was only four.  She said, "there's only four!"  I reached clumsily for the fifth ring (Title namedrop!), she saw the box come out of my pocket and gasped.  I got down on one knee, said something cheesy and asked her.  She said yes with tears welling up.  Success!

I didn't expect getting down on one knee to be quite as awkward as it was, and of course I didn't really plan anything to say, but it turned out alright.  It all rushed past for me at least. 

So here we are, now engaged.  Neither of us really knowing anything about planning a wedding, well I don't know anything at least.   We want something small, fun and memorable, and are prepared to throw most traditions and rules out the window.  We have a month, October, leaving us about 300 days.  Whatever happens its going to be an adventure.