Sneak peak!

Okay everyone, so we're about 13 days away from THEE day. Craziness! :)

I just wanted to update the blog with our registries and also give a little sneak peak of my brooch bouquet. :) It's not completely finished yet, but soon it will be. I can't decide if I am going to share it now or after the wedding... hmm... decisions decisions! :)

Welp. Let the countdown begin! :)

Charter bus

Oh! I need some advice from people on this.

We were thinking about chartering a bus for our friends so people would not have to risk driving drunk. We figure it will act like a shuttle, doing two trips to bring people from a central location here in Suisun (where people could park their cars and easily take a taxi home that night) to the Arsenal, and then back again. Our logic is that taxis are available for anyone staying in Benicia from the Arsenal, and this bus would be available to take our friends safely back to where they could get a taxi and not have to pay an arm and a leg. We would ask whoever is using it to help pay for it (no more than $25, but probably less).

What do YOU think of this idea? Open bar + charter bus = Good times?

Help me out!!

I swear we aren't dead...

Hello everyone! I know it's been a dreadfully long time since I've updated, but life has been nothing short of crazy these past couple of months. I finally have a minute to sit down and write to you all!

First of all, we bought our house and are finally all moved in. Everything doesn't look fabulous and put together yet, but the house itself looks AMAZING! If you haven't been by yet, you should definitely come check it out. :)

I picked up my dress about a month and a half ago and it fits like a glove. I am absolutely in love with it and I have never looked at myself and liked how I looked in anything as much as I do in this. It is perfect. Makes me feel so perty. ;-)

Invitations were all sent out, so if you thought you were supposed to receive one and didn't, please let me know so I can fix that. :) If you haven't RSVP'd yet, please do so immediately! I've got to get a final count of people so I know what to reserve, how much booze to buy, and how much food to plan for. :)

Tomorrow I make a semi-final payment to the Arsenal.

I've started working on my brooch bouquet and that mofo is going to be ridiculously heavy!! It's also going to beautiful, especially with all of the amazing pieces given to me by family and friends. I am very excited.

I can't believe in a month we will be married! All official and everything! :)

Hmm. What else to update.... We received our rings and they are amazingly beautiful. They even gave us this free fingerprint pendant for Shelby Leigh.

Speaking of Shelby, she is a full-fledged walker now! And quite the chatterbox as well. I wonder who she gets it from...?

Anyway. Here is my dress for anyone who was wondering...

And here is what the final invitations looked like:

This is how they started.

Anywho. I'm gonna get back to checking my guestlist. Hope to see as many of you as possible in October. I can't wait to share all of the memories with you guys!

registry update and all that good stuff

hey everyone! i am a total and complete slacker when it comes to updating this block! sorry, life happened.

we decided to register at myregistry.com. it's pretty cool that we can scan things as we walk through stores and they'll upload directly to our registry!

i have more updates later, but we have to get to our old house and finish moving out of it! catch ya on the flipside, peeps! muahaha. -aliy

Finally an update! :)

Okay, so it hasn't quiiiiiiite been a month since I last updated, but I have definitely been slackin'.

Hmmm. Sooo the save-the-dates were sent out. Here is what they look like, sans the scrapbook cardstock and magnets they're mounted on:

I've received our cake topper. So cute from Colorado Carla. It looks like this:

Her hair is custom painted brown, but I'm going to paint her shoes red and paint on Dustin's rank on the sleeves. :)

I went to Britex fabrics in San Francisco to get started on some surprises for my bridesmaids. I haven't figured out what I'm going to give my bridesman and our officiant. One thing I do know is that Jesh is going to be the most hilarious reverend of EVER. I can't wait.

I need to get started on the invitations because... dun dun dun, we will hopefully be moving at the end of June and with decorating a new home and my new job, I won't have a TON of time to work on putting these invitations together! I ordered some pocket-folds from Cards&Pockets and have a ton of great ideas for how I want to put them together. I will post the finished product.

We're looking into hotel accommodations at the Hampton Inn & Suites in Suisun on the waterfront. We're hoping to get a group rate for our friends and family coming from out of town. Also, we have a rental car connection for people coming out to the wedding. We can get you some sweet discounts there, and we can always pick you up from the airport. :)

Last night we completed our ring kit for our wedding bands. We bought them from Fabuluster. These are examples of the rings we will be receiving. It was a really fun experience to get the prints and I'm going to send them off today!

We celebrated Shelby's first birthday last weekend and it was great to see so many family members and friends come together for the little girl that brought us so much closer together. It made me very excited for the upcoming events. :-)

When we move into our home, hopefully in early July, we'll be having a housewarming, and then obviously our October wedding! We hope that you all don't get tired of celebrating good times with us because we can't wait to return the favor for you guys!

Speaking of our house, you can check out the listing on Zillow; here is a quick picture of the before. Our offer was accepted, so here's to hoping everything works out. :)

Hm. So. What else? We're headed to Hawai'i on Monday for 9 days with Dominique. We are so excited to spend some quality time with her, loungin' in paradise and trying to finagle a way to get her out here for the wedding. Damn the Army for spoiling our plans. Fuckers...

This will be Shelby's second plane ride, as we went to Oklahoma for our twin-family's wedding in Tulsa. We flew into Wichita, stayed the night with Andi & Co. and then went down to Tulsa. Here's a picture of the happy family:

And on that note, I will end my update. I will try to be more on the ball. :) Thanks for reading!

Registered at JC Penney! Here's the registry. Check it out! It's all super expensive! Haha. Gotta love hoping someone loves us enough to contribute to our new home, especially if we don't get the house! Ha! Anyway. Going to Trader Joe's now to get the fixins for pizza! :)

We registered at Sears! Woohoo.

There's a whole bunch of expensive stuff on here. If you feel charitable, buy it; if not, we were planning on getting it anyway. :-D

Haha. Sears.com registry.

Anyway, that is all. <3

Wedding registry

I'm sitting here trying to figure out what to register for for our registry. I'm not exactly sure what to register for! We are planning to buy a home in the next few months, but I don't really know that we desperately NEED anything for that. Hmm, we need a bigger bed, but I was planning on getting that already. I have a million and a half appliances. I want a Dyson Ball vacuum, but that's really pricey. I don't know!! We'll have more bathrooms, so we'll need shower curtains and crap like that. We were planning on getting a new washer&dryer when we moved.

I don't know. We've lived together for two years and we've got all of this stuff. What do we even need?

Bridal party dresses

Ooooh. I forgot to add.

Decided on the bridesmaids dresses from Milanoo. They'll be in red with ivory shoes of the bridesmaid's choice. :)

Going to have three flower girls: my nieces Isie, Katie, and Ashley. They're all going to be SO cute! :)

They will wear this dress from Girl's Dress Line:

To set them each apart, I'm going to have some pretty silk flowers in red, orange, and yellow for them each to have where the silk flower is at the waist and also in their hair/on a headband.

Yep. So cute. :) So excited. Okay. No more posts. Bedtime.

Want my hair like this!

Honeymoon Booked!

Dustin and I decided we wanted to stay relatively close for our honeymoon, so we're going to go to Vegas! Dustin has never been and I would like to go being over the shock of having just turned 21.

We booked our flights on Virgin America (another cool experience in itself; I love that airline!) for Sunday, October 16th and we will be returning Wednesday, October 19th!

We'll be staying at the Flamingo, which, in my opinion, goes along with the retro vibe I'm going for. :)

Hmm. What else? Oh! I reserved a night-time helicopter ride over the strip for us. My mom told me awhile back that for a wedding gift she was going to get me a bigger bed and Dustin a ride in a helicopter. She thought it was ridiculous that he never got to ride in one after tearing them apart and putting them back together for 5 1/2 years. Well, I guess the bed will come later, but at least he is getting his helicopter ride! It's going to be really cool... I've never been in one either.

Dustin said we can go to a fancy dinner where they have vegan and non-vegan food since I found a website called LV Vegan that has the ins on all the good vegan and vegan-friendly spots. There are definitely a lot more than when I went in 2008. :) Yay for that.

Also, we would like to go to a Cirque du Soleil show, but it depends on if we can afford it. Possibly Zumanity. I gave him the option of Zumanity or Beatles LOVE by saying: "Do you like sex or the Beatles better?" Classy, right?

Anywho. I'm pondering the option of setting up a honeymoon registry. We have pretty much everything for a home since, you know, we're not exactly traditional and did everything backwards. I think Dustin will probably register at Sears for some household tools, and I will probably register at Target for a few things, like a DYSON BALL PET VACUUM CLEANER!! Haha. But other than that, we have most everything we need. So a honeymoon registry would make sense, right? Who knows. Just give us gift cards if you're planning to give us anything; love is really okay, though.

K. Well. Moving on. Gotta put tonight's dinner away and off to bed! Goodnight.

Engagement photo teaser! :)

Soooo, we took some photos for our Save-the-Dates today. Brandon took them for us at the Nut Tree Plaza in Vacaville. That place is actually really fun. I want to go back to play! :)

Here is a teaser of what we did; I am playing with photoshop and really have no clue what I'm doing. Once Brandon and Chelsea come back

from Vegas, he's going to do some more in a different place.

Anyway. Enjoy the ridiculous things I've figured out how to do on PS.

Here is the original:

And just because she's so damned cute, here's Shelby's never-dull reaction to a lemon. :)

Check list update!

Dress ordered and venue booked! Engagement photos this week!


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Sneaking around in the Arsenal

So I told Dustin I wanted to take him to breakfast at this place with the best bacon ever since I don't eat bacon. I also wanted to show him the Arsenal, at least from the outside. Well, we were in luck because the door was unlocked so we went inside to explore. Here are some pictures I didn't capture on Friday.
























The verdict: he loves it, too! Just nor the new buildings around it.
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THEE Dress!

So, I decided yesterday that I wanted to try on a mermaid/trumpet/fit&flare dress silhouette.

I was looking at the dress I was set on before, when I was a size 20. I love how it looks here, on the skinny model:




But then I found it on the plus-size model, and it doesn't flatter her figure at all. It lands right where my tummy is all bad. See:




Not nearly as flattering.

So. We couldn't find any bridal shops in Benicia, so we headed over the bridge to Concord to Gesinee's Bridal. I went through some gowns and my chest was obviously too big for sample sizes. I (barely) got into a size 10 with a corseted, lace-up back and organza ruffles. THE dress was almost identical to that, except it's ivory, has better ruffles, and has some very subtle beading. I never in a million years would have picked this dress myself, but the consultant, Laura, picked it and it was perfect. Problem: it cost $890, plus tax and shipping, not including alterations.

So, I went online to show my dad the dress and I ran across some listings for the dress for $660.

I researched the listings and some led to Chinese shops that I'm not sure about with internet payments and differing trade policies. Others led to legit storefronts.

That in mind, I stopped at Gesinee's on my way home from Oakland today. I asked if they would work with me on the price. They said no.

Soooo I went to Mori Lee's website, called around to a few authorized retailers, and found the dress in Walnut Creek for $660 and in Vallejo at Bere's Bridal for $650. Ding ding ding! I went to try it on, it was a size 12, but I opted for the 14, and am ordering it either tomorrow morning orrrrr Monday morning.

Soooooooo, you ready to see it?







I'm going to have a birdcage veil instead of a real veil. Loves it!

Enjoy!
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The Arsenal , it is!

So! I visited the Arsenal yesterday and it is absolutely PERFECT!! It is exactly what I had imagined as THE venue. I literally fell in love. On Monday, I'm booking it for Friday, October 14th, 2011!

It's perfect for the <100 guests we are having and, oh, it's so charming. I told Dustin I wanted to get married in an abandoned hangar or drydock on Mare Island. While this isn't nearly as desolate and unkempt as those ideas, it's completely ideal for me. ;-)

Here are some pictures of the areas we will be using:







The archway we'll be married under. There will be about 20 or so chairs for people who really NEED to sit, but for all you spry, young folk, I think you can handle 15 minutes of standing until you get to go inside and get shwasted. ;-)



Speaking of shwasted, here's the bar! Dustin's friend/coworker, Brooks, will be tending said bar for us on that night. ;-)



This is in the same room as the bar, and is where the banquet tables will be set up for the buffet line. Nom. And the floors are hella cool!






The reception area and tables. Do you think we should find a dancefloor to put over the hardwood or just use the hardwood? Let me know!

The rest of these are just cool details of the space and other areas that we won't necessarily be using for our party, but they're there and are very, very cool. Enjoy:



The hallway (a last minute ceremony spot if the weather hates me. Haha.)













The fountain!! I love it!!

Anyway. Enjoy. I can't wait to see it all set up and perty.

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Benicia Arsenal

I'm going to go visit the Benicia Arsenal today. On YouTube, I found a video of a wedding ceremony and reception here.

I think this place is cool because it's so.... non-traditional? I was talking about getting married in an abandoned hangar, so this kind of goes along with that in that it's an old building with character. And it's not too pretty pretty. Plus, black&white photos much? ;-)

Ignore the unattractive people in this video, but get an idea/feel of the arsenal:

Anyway. I have an appointment there later on. Will take pictures and post details. :)

Vezer Family Winery and next steps

So, Chelsea and I visited the Vezer Family Winery today, and while the property is BEAUTIFUL, I think it's a little small and, hrm, socially....conservative for the crowd we're going to have there. Mostly the smallness that gets me, but I have a feeling that our group of friends will want some liquor, and unfortunately that's not provided. They also don't let just anyone cook in their kitchen, which is completely understandable, but I kind of need someone to be able to prepare food. :) They're not completely off the list, still an option, but I'm glad I visited the gorgeous grounds and got some perspective of the venue. As promised, here are the pictures I took:

My next stop is going to be at the Benicia Arsenal. Considering the military-ish them, it seems like a good option. I'm not sure how the outside areas look, but I'm still researching. I want an outside ceremony and then we can move the reception inside if necessary. It's really pretty. I will be visiting it tomorrow probably. Depends on if there's time with everything else going on.

I just realized there are going to be lots of kids there! We are going to need a corral! Insannnnnity. :)

Anyway. Will post more pictures tomorrow. Adios! Oh yeah, I forgot to post when we're looking at doing this thing. October 14th, 15th, or 16th. Weigh in here or on my facebook to let me know what you all think is best: a Friday evening, Saturday mid-day to evening (which is more expensive!), or Sunday. I'm kind of thinking a Friday evening, but I'm not sure. Let me know what you think!!

Ready, Go!

So, Dustin proposed on Monday night and that meant that I had to immediately get wedding fever and start planning maniacally. It's funny because now he's kind of into the planning.

I promised Mikey I would document everything along the way, so that's why I am doing this blog. Hopefully I'll keep up with it since I
don't have the best track record with things like this. ;)

Anyway, we sat down and made up our bare-minimum guest list: 80 people! I wanted 50! I never thought I'd want a small wedding, but really, I'd like to be around the people I am closest to.

So even though 80 people is still a small amount (my absolute max is 100), we were going through deciding our wedding parties. We both know there will be at least 5 people on each side, but we are considering 7. That's a freaking lot!

Also, this wedding has become somewhat of a military affair. Dustin and all of his groomspeople will be in their dress uniforms. We even convinced my dad to do it! So yeah, that's where the 7 come in because there are two people we are inviting that are also past military and are really close to Dustin that we don't want to feel left out. I mean, I'm all about a big wedding party, especially since all the ones on Dustin's side won't have to rent any tuxes or buy any dresses, but what do you think? Is a wedding party of 16 (including the bride&groom) too many for an 80 person wedding?

Also, it's funny that we don't know anyone/aren't close to anyone in the Air Force, considering our proximity to Travis and EVERYONE being in AFJROTC. We will have the Marines, Army, and Navy represented in their blues. No Air Force. Oh well. ;)

Today, since Chelsea just got home yesterday, she is going with me to check out Mankas Corner as a venue. I will post some pictures when I get home.

For now, you can look at my ring! I am so excited!!!




- aliy

Location:Suisun City,United States