May 27th, 2016 Update--Rings, Favors, Colors, and more.

So much has been going on lately! Mostly just a lot of little things that add up, but I might as well give you the 411 on everything!

Colors: 

Julie, my sister and POH (Princess of Honor) (AKA MOH), helped us finally decide our colors! My mom asked what the point of the colors was since I am having a Disney Princess wedding--there's a lot of points to having colors!

• My bouquet
• Table decorations (the venue decorates the tables)
• The grooms-men's outfits (Josh says they don't have to dress as princes if they don't want to. I'm 50% OK with that because it would save me a lot of work, however part of me does wish this was going to happen.) 
• The usher's and reader's outfits. 
• Flower decorations.
• ETC. (Covers all other things I'm not remembering at the moment.)

 I knew I wanted sapphire blue as one of the colors (since that's the color of my ring), and I had originally thought pink, but Josh wasn't crazy about that, so we were reconsidering the different colors we could pair with blue. We weren't hitting on anything that really stood out, and Julie suggested we just do blue and white. We talked about it, and neither of us really had a problem with that, so ok!

Rings:

I got Josh his ring! Wait till you see it! You can't see it, of course, because it's a surprise (and boy will you be surprised!) It was my idea, and he loves it! It really compliments us as a couple, however it doesn't exactly fit in with the general theme of the wedding.

Josh, Daniel (my brother), Cynthia (Daniel's gf), and I went to Universal Studio's Hollywood recently, and saw Harry Potter World! (It was amazing! Daniel and I both almost cried after riding the one really good ride.) While there, I got down on one knee and fake proposed to Josh. It didn't gather a crowd, but that's ok, because I was nervous anyway. (Now I know [a little of] what guys go through when they do that! I admire you all! Your bravery! Good job! lol) Daniel and Cynthia took pictures and video (I'll try to post later). It was funny and dorky, which was kind of the whole point. We're for real engaged anyway; it was just a fun way to tell him that I got his ring in the mail. The only trouble now--he wants to wear it! I told him no, not until the wedding because it wouldn't be special, however he has tried it on a few times.

Even though we went and looked at some wedding rings for me, none really stood out as "the one". No real updates on that front as of yet.

Favors:

I found some really cute favors that I really liked, but Julie thought they might not hold enough candy, so we are waiting on that (besides--we have time! Only 14 months till the wedding!)

Dresses:

I've been sewing like crazy working on dresses (for the Princesses in Waiting AKA Bridesmaids), and for myself, for pictures. Four of the PIW dresses are currently in progress, which is really exciting!


There is so much we need to do to get the ball rolling! Josh still needs to ask his guys, we still need to set up a wedding site, and the honeyfund account for our registry.

We finally decided partly on where we're going for our honeymoon! Italy! And somewhere else. Possibly Spain? I want to go for two weeks: one in Italy, and the other in another country! I've only ever been to Mexico (for a day, on a cruise with Julie), so I'm dying to see the world! Josh is well traveled, so he's been a lot of places already.

I keep having wedding-related dreams/nightmares. Most of them revolve around the idea that suddenly, I'm getting married RIGHT NOW (not in 14 months), and something, or several things, aren't ready. I scramble to try to get them ready, and ultimately, just end up going into the crowd of people waiting for me to walk down the aisle and telling them to scrap it all, go home, and we'll try again at a later date. It's nice that I have that kind of power in my dreams. In reality, if I tried that, I think that at least a few people would want to kill me. Hopefully, everything will be right when I do finally get married and I won't feel the urge to tell everyone to forget it, we'll try again another time.

One of the most recent dreams of this sort was that suddenly, it's the wedding and two major things were wrong:
1. I realized I hadn't requested the next two weeks off work for my honeymoon.
2. I realized that I didn't have a hair and makeup person to do my hair and makeup for the wedding.

I raced around to a bunch of different malls, trying to find someone and not succeeding. I finally show up at the wedding, walk into the ceremony and tell everyone that it's not going to work out this time, and that we will try again at a later date.

It's not always these two things that are the problem--it's always a variety of problems, but the same basic plot outline in the dream. These dreams aren't super frequent, but they happen sometimes. It's not that I'm insecure in my relationship with Josh, or that we're getting married, but I'm not sure why I'm having these dreams... maybe I fear everything not being perfect. That's probably it. Although in reality, I don't think I'm rude enough to call off an entire wedding because some small aspect isn't perfect. I know everything won't be exactly perfect that day, but because it's my day, it will be perfect. :)

Well, TTFN!

Step 1(or not?): Find the Venue

Hello!

I am finally taking the time to start my <3 <3 <3 wedding blog <3 <3 <3!!! It's always something I figured I'd do as soon as I got engaged, but it has been eight months now with no blog, so here it goes!

I'll start with a summary of our engagement. I might post a longer post about it another time, but here are the important details:

Josh proposed on August 28th, 2015 at Disney World. It was amazing! We were on a family trip with his family and I was Disney Bounding (as Snow White) with Josh's sisters. After an amazing day, he proposed in front of the Walt Disney statue, in front of the castle, before the fireworks and parade. It was truly magical! Here is a video if you would like to see:

My amazing cousin Mary then threw us a Princess Engagement Party in Big Bear at the family reunion (for my dad's side). It was a lot of fun, I wore a big beautiful sapphire blue gown, and my hair and makeup looked like a princess. We got some wonderful gifts, made some crafts (my family made me a memory book for Josh and I with advice), and ate cupcakes that we ourselves decorated!

After Josh's marriage proposal, it was my turn to propose to my friends! I asked 11 girls to be my Princesses in Waiting, 9 of them said yes. I am perfectly happy with this! The two who said no are off to pursue bigger better things (college!) and would be too busy, so I support them in their decision.

I asked my friends at "Tina's Tea". I had made each a mini photo album with pictures and memories of us. I put them in small hand crafted jewelry boxes that my dad (who is an architect) made out of rose wood. Here is a video of the tea:

Looking at all this now, I realize I should have been blogging this whole process! I've been so busy with school though--I am taking university classes through NAU to become a teacher, doing service learning in elementary schools, and working a job as well. I am so busy!

No excuses though! I will try to keep this more up to date--I want to always remember this process!

The Venue

Josh and I discussed our most important desires for the venue and when it all came out, what was most important to us directly contradicted.

Tina's Desires:
To have a Musical Disney Princess Wedding with singing and dancing.
To be able to invite EVERYONE.

Josh's Desires:
To be able to provide (we pay for it) free alcohol to all the guests
To serve high quality food
To only have his closest friends and family

As you can see, there is a big problem in our desires. Josh said if we could find a reasonable way to finance a big wedding, he would be okay with it.

Josh and I have looked at a few places for Venue's here and there. We have played around with the idea of getting married in Los Angeles versus Las Vegas. I grew up in LA, so a lot of my family and friends on my dad's side are oriented out there. Josh's family (oriented all over) would have to travel, and so would my mom's side of the family.

We looked at a nice, and affordable reception room at a park, Barbara J. Riley Community Center. It looked great, but it only fit up to 150 people and we felt we would have many more than that. Also, no alcohol, which was something that was important to Josh.

The other place we checked out was actually an Elks Lodge in Norwalk, CA. We determined it might not be the best place for us.

We decided that the most affordable way to have a big wedding would be to pay for all the catering and alcohol ourselves, and basically do everything ourselves.

We decided to look at the Henderson Convention Center in Henderson, NV--it would be $3,000 to have the wedding there and we could use their amphitheater for the ceremony and their convention center rooms for the reception. It was pretty bare, but it had everything we thought we were looking for, and we were going to see if a relative would cater for us, once we found our venue for sure.

Here are some pictures of the Henderson Convention Center:

After we left the Convention Center, we thought we had found our place! We went to talk to my Aunt Annette, who has a lot of experience with weddings, and she starts pointing out all these expenses that we (at least I hadn't--Josh says he had) hadn't thought of yet, like how decorating a wedding takes around at least $1,000, and how it is a lot to ask of a bridal party. My cousin, her daughter, Teresa is also engaged and she is getting married in November 2016, so they had been looking at venues for her. They told us about one that they had checked out, The Ritz of Las Vegas, that was all inclusive and within our budget, so we asked them to take us to check it out.

When we got there and saw it, and talked to the owner, Gloria, we fell in love with it! It was everything we didn't know we wanted, and it covers everything except the photographer and videographer. We were ecstatic!

We don't want to give too much away, but here is a sneak peek:

It was raining the day we went, so it looks wet outside, but if you go to their Facebook page (just look up The Ritz of Las Vegas) you can see more pictures and it is so beautiful!

We left knowing we had found our place, we just wanted to reassess our guest list and consider the date.

A few days later, we contacted Gloria, she sent over the paperwork, we paid the down payment, and took the first step in paying for the biggest, most expensive thing that either of us have yet encountered in our life.

We are so excited! I can't stop thinking about our big day and making plans! Soon, Josh is going to ask his groomsmen, we are going to start fine tuning details, and figure out where we are going to honeymoon and the ball will really start rolling! I can't wait to set up our wedding website!

In the mean time, I will see you all later. ;)