Photographer

This is pretty old news but worth adding to our list of details.

Aside from selecting the church, our photographer was one of the first things we were able to nail down. This came about through an otherwise useless afternoon at one of those cheesy bridal expos at the LA convention center. John spent the whole time trolling the room for free cake samples while I beat off salespeople with a stick. The only booth were we saw anything of interest was the one for Mark Brooke photography. I wasn't really there to pick a photographer but their work totally caught our attention.

We quickly made an appointment to meet with them. They are a husband and wife team who live in orange county and are some of the sweetest people we have met. Their names are Mark and Candice. I have attached their website for your viewing pleasure. With John being an artist, we really needed someone with an artistic eye to capture our day. No 80's prom photography. As you can see from their site (which runs a little slow sometimes) their style is much more photo-journalistic than the average photographers and they do a lot of interesting in lens effects. They weren't cheap but worth every penny.

Don't worry mom we will get some normal line-up-and-smile shots too ;)

http://www.markbrooke.net/

Colors!

We have finally chosen our colors. Wheeeew!

There was a lot of back-and-forth over this mostly due to my indecision and an attempt to avoid mimicking any of the other 200 weddings we are attending around the same time. So after much deliberation here you go...

Lime Green

Light Blue

Khaki/Cream

Dark Chocolate Brown

Fresh cheerful summer colors that fit with our reception venue decor!

Ok ... on to the next thing. :)

Christmas in Michigan

Melissa and I just got back from our week long trip to the frozen midwest. We had a great time hanging out with my family. We had a full schedule of things to do. We went to The Henry Ford Museum to see a bunch of historic cars, trains and other artifacts like the rocking chair Lincoln was assassinated in. We saw a Piston game from a suite in the Palace thanks to my good friend Ryan Pretzer. We had Christmas Eve dinner with the Garity side of my family at my uncle Phil's house. There were even some movies and a trip to Greektown thrown in there too! It was a great trip and we were so thankful for all the hospitality and the good times we got to share with everyone. We are looking forward to 2009 and wish everybody a happy and healthy holiday season!

Another day another auto.

I haven't put up a post in a while. Tooooooo much stuff going on. As some of you know I was the bologna in a car sandwich last month. One of those situations where the person in front of me slammed on her brakes, I screeech to a hault but the guy behind me didn't react in time to avoid hitting me which slammed me into her. Add that drama to the fact that no one in the accident but me spoke English, I felt like I had joined the circus in the middle of Santa Monica Blvd. She looked fine at the time but my little Elantra was totaled, I couldn't believe it. Cleaning her out was like attending a wake. I loved that crappy little car and I had JUST paid it off last March. All is well that ends well though, I was found innocent of any blame in the whole mess and I used the settlement check to buy the car I really wanted when I bought my Elantra but couldn't afford at the time. Here is my new baby (see pic). Its a 2007 Honda Accord SE. No sunroof and its silver again but what can you do? She only has 8000 miles on her and still smells new. I find myself stopping five car lengths behind people and always watching what the guy behind me is doing because #1 I am still jumpy from the accident and #2 I don't want anyone to come within a mile of my pristine paint. John was great through the whole process and really kept me from losing it a few times.

Bummer!!!!

After fighting with Royal Caribbean's lost and found for the last two months I am sad to say that my wonderful Cannon powershot has been lost forever. *moment of silence* Unfortunately this also contained all of our photos from Mazatlan. We will try to load some of the ones from John's camera this week. We should have some left from Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas.

FOCUS

There are a bunch of different things you have to do to get married in a catholic church. Seeing as how it is a sacrament, the preparation goes beyond just signing up for a date and paying them money. One of the things we have done so far was taking the FOCUS test. This is basically a bunch of questions about your relationship which you answer with Agree, Disagree, or Undecided. Shortly after finishing the test we both came to the conclusion that we must communicate better than most people because the majority of questions seemed awfully basic to us.

I am happy to report that my perfect record of A's is still in effect as we scored 92% overall. We would have done better but John didn't know what the phrase "Family Planning" meant. hahahaha he's so cute :)

Venue .... check!

Over the last few months we have visited numerous reception sites and called or emailed every venue within 30 miles of the church. My files are spilling over with quotes and I feel like we have just run the gauntlet!! But after what seems like an eternity we have secured our venue for the wedding!!!

We will be having our reception at 5:00 in the penthouse ballroom of the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica. They have been very helpful and cut us a hell of a deal. The view from the ballroom is amazing. You can see up and down the coast from Palos Verdes to Malibu. Not to mention it is about 7 blocks from the church so none of you out of towners will get lost on the way there.

I can't even tell you how happy I am right now. Now I'm taking a month off from wedding stuff haha. ;)