Engagement Pictures Preview

If you remember from a previous post, we chose to go with Niki Marie Photography for our engagement pictures. Niki helped us decide on outfits and locations and two weeks ago we drove to downtown Detroit for our engagement shoot.

A few days later she posted this sneak peek!

Photo credit.

A few things:

1. I LOVE this picture! I look just like I feel—relaxed and happy—and Nathan is actually smiling for real! Of course, after all of my dilemma about what to wear and not wearing black... I'm wearing black. In my defense, I had a colored shirt on, but it was getting chilly by the end of the day.

2. The whole photo shoot was SO much fun. Nathan & I relaxed and interacted easily while Niki snapped pictures. She would put us in a basic location and pose and then let us laugh and talk while she took pictures. Occasionally she would give us some direction like  "Laura, look at Nathan" or "Nathan, make Laura laugh!"

3. There is a hilarious story behind this picture. We were actually done with the photo shoot—it was 5:00 and we were driving away from downtown Detroit towards I-75. All of a sudden Niki goes "pull down one of these streets, the sun is perfect!" Nathan pulls an illegal u-turn in an intersection on a red light (good thing there were no cars around) and heads down a street with ZERO parking spots. So we keep going and going, and the sun keeps getting lower and lower! Finally he parks in a no parking zone, we hop out of the car, and we all run back two blocks to get the sun at the perfect angle. We stand in the middle of the street as Niki snaps away and I say "These pictures better be good for all of this!" And they were.

I can't wait to see the rest! We've also decided to book Niki for our wedding pictures. I'm thrilled! Not only are we getting great pictures at a great price, I also feel completely comfortable with her. I did not feel rushed or unnatural during the engagement shoot—and I'm sure working with her on our wedding day will be the same way.

Countdown: Five Months

Now that we're five months out from the wedding (crazy!), it's time to take stock of where we are now and what goals we have for the next month! From the very beginning I discarded the checklists on The Knot—umm research lighting? book a calligrapher? buy wedding insurance? According to this check list I am way behind.

Good news. It doesn't have to be like that. With a little help from A Practical Wedding—great blog, book, & resource!—I came to realize that this is my wedding, and I don't have to finish all of the 179 uncompleted tasks on The Knot. 

So let's recap.

Things that are completed:

Venue: Pleasant Ridge Camp & Retreat Center

Photo credit.

Caterer: Sammie Daigle from the Pleasant Ridge Camp & Retreat Center

Photographer: Niki Marie Photography

Dress: Can't tell you yet! Coming up... check out the wedding dress post to make a guess.

Programs: Crossword puzzles & I Spy in progress!

Personal photo.

Things I'd like to start on this month:

Invitations: We need to finalize our guest list, begin collecting addresses, & come up with a rough mock-up of our invitations.

Flowers & Decorations: I need to start making flowers, continue looking for books, and work on Scrabble letters.

Caterer: Hopefully having a tasting this month and deciding on our menu & cakes!

Registry: Decide where to register & start scanning.

Hmm... anything I'm forgetting??

Tangent Tuesday: Meeting My Goals

The week of the 5k started out just as badly as it possibly could—with me sick and unable to talk or breathe well. I forced myself to lower my expectations and kept telling myself "just do your best!" Inside, I always wanted to hit my three goals, but I began to realize they were less and less likely. Add a stressful semester and limited time to train to a massive head cold, and that's hardly a recipe for a personal best run.

But I still woke up that morning, ate my best "running" breakfast, dressed in my favorite outfit, and headed out to the starting line ready to race. I stood next to my sister and her friend—who talked about running a sub 20:00 race and starting out at 6:30 pace. Not happening! I knew I had to let them go out and start conservatively.

Personal photo. Me with my two sisters after the race.

Conservatively for me turned out to be a 7:18 first mile, which was perfect for this race under these conditions. At this point I estimate that there were about ten girls in front of me. The second mile contained the largest hill—but I powered through it with a second mile time of 6:58 and passed four or five girls, including my sister's friend. I yelled encouragement at her and started the third mile.

Ouch. This one hurt. I rounded the corner to last big stretch and my grandpa shouted "You're in fourth!" Knowing I was so close to my "A" Goal, I tried to push it. However, there were winds gusting up to 25mph and a full half mile of the section was directly into the wind. Finally, with less than a half mile to go, I passed the third place girl and settled in about ten yards behind the second place girl.

I tried to kick, but it just wasn't there. Finally I could see the clock ticking closer and closer to 22:00 and finished strong, just ten steps behind the second place girl for a time of 21:53! I was absolutely thrilled. I had no regrets in this race—I ran the best race I could, met all my goals, and set myself up for success in the future!

Personal photo. First, second, and third place girls overall. My sister took first!

So what do you do when you run your best possible race and meet all your goals? Set new goals of course!

Wedding Dress Nightmares

Alternative title: How to Get Out of Going Dress Shopping.

Most brides look forward to dress shopping, right? Ehh. Me not so much. In fact, the idea of going shopping with a group of females and trying on dresses which will most likely not be flattering OR in my price range is pretty terrifying. Which is why I immediately turned to buying my dress online.

One of the first places I looked was J. CREW, for two reasons.

1. J. CREW has the kind of simple understated elegance I was looking for in a wedding dress.
2. The prices weren't more than my entire budget combined.

Here are some of my favorites:

Clockwise from top left: Bettina, Sararose, Sophia, Sinclair, Lyden, & Larissa.

You'll probably notice a theme in the dresses above: straight, simple, not strapless, and under $1000. In fact, I probably would wear any of the dresses above. I had a preference from the beginning (and Nathan vetoed some of them), but I started looking around online to see if I could find any of them cheaper.

I did in fact buy one of the dresses above online (not from the J. CREW website though). Which one do you think it was?

Flashback Friday: We Actually Talk

I think this is my favorite part of the story because I get to mock Nathan a little bit. (Don't worry, he deserves it—and I mock myself a little too.) Turns out, Nathan finally got the courage up to text me (after stalking my Facebook to find my number). That text?

"You told my roommate I bit you on the head? Lol"

So romantic. He's lucky I already had a huge crush on him and it didn't matter what he said! That text was at about 8:30 at night and we were still texting each other at 2:00 the next morning. Pretty sure by midnight I told him my greatest fears and by 1:00am I was asking him about future plans. Yeah. I'm not subtle.

Maybe not my brightest moment, but it worked! We've either seen each other or texted each other every single day since then. But for a long, long time (it seemed) it was just texting. As in—he wouldn't ask me to do anything! Not to eat a meal with him, or to hang out, or even to just study together. So I not-so-subtly told him I was studying up at the field house and "if he wanted to" he could come join me.

Well he did, and we had fun—but the next move was his. And finally, two weeks later (was it only two weeks?), Nathan just happened to be outside my door after class. Which brought on the following conversation:

Nathan: "So... there's some orchestra here next week."
Me: "Yes there is!"
*walks in silence*
Nathan: "From Poland, I think. It's Poland, right?"
Me: "Yep, the Polish Orchestra!"
*more walking in silence*
Nathan: "So..."
Me: "Yes?"
Nathan: "You going with anybody?"

Once again, he is SO lucky I was just waiting for him to ask so I could say yes. And here's the first picture of Nathan and me together—look at how precious and young we were!

Personal photo from the good old days.

Crossword Progress Report

So instead just of coming up with really cool projects... I decided to actually work on one. Namely, the crossword puzzle. It took me a lot longer than I expected to come up with the words & clues! Here's a sneak peek...

Personal photo.

You'll have to wait on the rest! When I was working on the crossword puzzle though, I got a grand idea. Have you seen the "I Spy" cards all over Pinterest/wedding blogs? They look like this:

Photo credit one and two.

Well, I can make one of those! Except personalized, of course. Oh, and I had this idea for a cute layered set-up for everyone's place at the table... here's what I'm thinking. Apart they would look like this (ignore the rough mock-up...):

And then I would layer them together, add a pencil, and tie with a piece of ribbon (in the wedding colors!). It would look like this:

Photos courtesy of my awesome PowerPoint skills.

What do you think? Will it work?

On not being a Pinterest addict...

Actually, I had to google "Pinterest" to make sure I spelled it correctly—that's how infrequently I use it! I do have a Pinterest, but I haven't experienced the seductive pull others of my friends apparently have... maybe it is yet to come? When Nathan and I first started talking about getting engaged, I got super excited and joined Pinterest and created a wedding board. Yay! Pin all the things!

Photo credit.

But wait...

1. We weren't engaged yet. I knew I was committed to Nathan and had no doubt he felt the same way, but I didn't want my friends to think I was pressuring him (or he was pressuring me). I also didn't want to feel foolish if something happened and we didn't end up together.

2. If and when we did get engaged, I didn't want everyone to see the details of my wedding before we actually got married (this was before secret boards—on that note, how did it take Pinterest so long to create the feature of secret boards?). I do love input, but there can be "too many cooks in the kitchen." And to be honest, I really do want some parts of my wedding to be a surprise!

What I ended up doing was creating a Pinterest profile using only my first name and not following anyone I know—so essentially I have a Pinterest for myself but don't use it socially. Instead, it's a collection of pictures from around the Internet for me to reference, which I do... once in awhile.