Getting Started -- Lacey

Welcome--

As Shawn said in his post, this blog is an attempt to centralize the wedding effort. Furthermore, it is a place where we hope to share our ideas, get advice, and delegate tasks throughout the entire process. We want everyone who is involved in the wedding, all of our family, and all of our friends, to be included every step along the way. We also understand that everyone has a busy life, ours is busy as well, so we want to make the planning as painless as possible for all. I want to thank all of you who have already offered to help and those of you who will help in the future. We appreciate every single one of you! It is going to take a lot of work to make this thing go off, but we are up to the challenge and couldn't be more excited!

The Basics --

Every wedding has a few basics such as the colors, theme, location... You get the picture. I could almost call this section "Frequently Asked Questions" since most of the questions I get involve these basics. I will do my best to outline what we are thinking below, and hopefully go a bit more in depth in future posts as we get closer to the date. We are one year out, after all. So, without further delay, here are the basics.

Date:
If you could not tell, the date for our wedding is November 27, 2010. We chose the Saturday closest to December 1st, a date that was chosen to honor my grandparents. On December 1st, 1991 my Grandfather drove eight hours from Apple Valley to Modesto to come pick my sister and I up to come stay with them for six months. He then drove us two girls, five and six at the time, back down to Apple Valley. 12-Years later I moved away, fully grown.

Venue:
As Shawn mentioned above we won a free rental of the conference room at Gold Country Casino. The room is beautiful. The outer wall is rounded and covered in tall windows that overlook the hills at Kelly Ridge. The room is all inclusive. The tables and chairs are included, as are the linens. Clean up and set up are also included, which makes life easier on the two of us and our families. There are so many options for decorating! When we go to sign the contracts we will take pictures of the room for everyone to see.

Food:
We are planning on having a sit down dinner. The casino mandates that you use their catering if you are using their room. The menu is extensive, and compared to most of the caterers around, their prices are reasonable, so we don't mind. Spaghetti is Shawn's favorite food, and on the night my grandfather brought my sister and I home my grandmother had spaghetti waiting for us. Needless to say, spaghetti, along with a couple of other pasta choices, will be on the menu. The rest of it is still being hammered out.

Fire and Ice or A Winter's Night:
As you can probably guess, this section discusses our theme. It is purposefully general to allow flexibility in decor and was decided on after we listed our favorite colors. Shawn loves the color blue in almost every shade, and I love the crimson, burgundy, and wine shades. Blue is my second favorite color. So we decided on a combination of midnight blue, periwinkle blue, and wine red. We plan on using an ice motif throughout the room and lighting it with both Christmas lights and flameless tea-lights (an open flame is not allowed in the room). I have posted pictures of the our colors above and will go into more detail about how they will be laid out later. We also want to incorporate silver and crystal accents to make the room shine.

My People--

Last but not least, it is about time I announce my people since Shawn announced his.

Matron of Honor: Bethany Flicker
Maid of Honor: Sabrina Cavitt
Bridesmaids: Katelyn Hays and my junior Bridesmaid Brianna Compton

Other people who have offered their help and deserve notice is my wonderful aunt Pam Compton who will be taking me out to get my dress and helping out with the wedding, Shawn's mother, and Bethany's mother Janet Doyle, who makes some of the best cakes in the world and has offered to make my cake for me as well. Once again, I thank everyone who has offered their help! We definately appreciate you!

Next Post from Me: Wedding on A Budget or the DIY Wedding
Tune in next time for a discussion on how we are going to tackle our budget and what a DIY or Do It Yourself Wedding means for us.