Some pictures of our venue...

So, just to recap, we decided to rent out an entire home for the weekend of our wedding. We'll house the bridesmaids, groomsmen and their significant others for 2 nights, have a day to set up for the wedding, put on the rehearsal dinner, have the wedding on Sunday, and host a brunch on Monday.

I just grabbed some pictures of the place, the Mansion In The Woods in Douglas, that I wanted to share...

This is the front of the house, viewed from the driveway.

The view of the back of the house from the marsh and lake.

The master bedroom, aka our room, for the weekend.

It overlooks the whole backyard and has an amazing master bathroom. :)

If the weather isn't the best, we can have our ceremony here in the front foyer

with us up on the balcony.

Here is a portion of the dining room and kitchen, where we'll have our food and drinks set up

as well as a dance floor (envision the table gone!)

*siggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh* How beautiful is it? And that's only a few pictures!! :)

What the next 404 days hold for us...

So according to my personalized knot.com, there are 404 days left until the wedding. That seems so far, but everyone I've talked to says it just flies by. Which really- I can believe. On Sunday, Kev and I celebrated the 2nd anniversary since we met in SF in 2008. We spent a relaxing day in Boston, strolling through North End and seeing a movie at the Museum of Science. It really doesn't feel like I've only known him 2 years. Yes, the time has flown by but it's hard to imagine a life without with him around. :)

So since we've decided to have a family wedding in May, we're having a party/reception this summer for our friends and buddies. I'm actually really glad I did this opposed to having something right before/after the wedding like I've read alot of people do, because this splits up the work and time and attention I need to put into each. The party will be July 11 (yep- 7/11!) which means I have a little under 4 months. until that date. We're doing all our own invites for both the wedding and the summer party, so I decided to order the same paper size/color and split them up so half are used for the invites for this summer with one colored envelope and the other half are used for the save the dates for the wedding. Kev's designing and working on the save the dates this week (I have a template I liked, but he wanted to do it himself) and I think we'll be doing the same sort of thing for the invites. The paper should be in within the next few weeks, and I figure as long as the invites are sent out by early/mid-May (we do have some out of towners) we'll be fine. We do have time to work with the save the dates, and will be incorporating one of our engagement photos too, so those can really go out any time this summer.

The only real other thing I get to work on for the party is the website (-already started-), some light decorations and the favors. Kev and I have been throwing around a bunch of random ideas for the favors, but that too, as long as we have things figured out by mid/late May, we'll be fine. Luckily for us, the place we're having the party takes care of the food, has booze, has music, has entertainment (pool tables). Decorations will be easy, and we're planning on making and bringing cupcakes for everyone as dessert too.. but those can be done the week or two before the party. I've even got an old friend I used to take dance classes with who offered to do photos at the party this summer so our wedding photographer gets to enjoy the party!

Then we get to go and relax with friends. :) I'm excited to really get two happy occasions, instead of just one.

Once that's over, we have about 9 1/2 months until the wedding. I'm hoping to have my wedding dress by either late summer or sometime in fall. Then it's just figuring out food situation, booze situation, making some playlists, getting my bm's in order (bridesmaids, but that still made me laugh) and finding a charming person to marry us. Essentially, I want to have the invites out by Valentine's Day... so we can start working with them around Christmas. I'm still searching for that perfect pair of shoes too. (-Keep your eyes out!-)

All in all, it shouldn't be that crazy. At least I say that now.

I feel like most of my updates are the same recently, but once we get the ball rolling on this summer party thing they'll more than likely get more exciting. :)

And.. we have a date set :)

Hello people!

In my last post I talked about the bit of frustration we were having towards the property owner of the location where we wanted the wedding. Well, because of the weeks of back and forth confusion, her rudeness and lack of business ethic, as well as a very nasty email we received from her last week... We have decided to part ways with our Plymouth wedding idea. The place was beautiful, but the owner put so many restrictions and obviously had very limited experience in events and just was not worth the effort. We also were feeling uncomfortable in the fact of how we were being treated BEFORE we even put money down; who says she wouldn't act like this down the road, or cause major issues with our wedding??

Not worth it.

SO- We have moved onto bigger and more practical things. Literally in the last week of finally being fed up, we have found, views and fallen in love with a different location that not only is kinder on our wallets, but better fits our wedding plans. The owners rent the home out regularly for weddings, and actually our wedding is smaller than they're used to, so it's been extremely easy to lay out our plans and work with them. We have decided "this is the one," and already sent over a deposit. :)

The place is called, get this, "The Mansion in the Woods" and is located in Douglas, MA. You can see the place here.

Funny how things work out when you stop fighting and just let whatever is going to happen, happen. I do believe that this vacation home rental for the wedding is a great way to go for couples who do not want the typical wedding feeling. I'm not sure how easy this would be for larger weddings of over 100 people, but for us, it's perfect. I am happy with the ability to make my own decisions and not be limited to certain types of caterers, chair decorations, hours of dancing, ect. The only downside is dealing with difficult property owners, who are correct in wanting to protect their property but do it in a way that makes the couple feel like they're not worthy of the location. Luckily for us, we dealt with it but never signed anything or put any money down. And, were still able to find another location. :) Okay, my rant is done!

Soo... It's official: There are 413 days until we are married!

And the countdown begins...

I Have the Patience of a Toddler..

After a couple weeks of back and forth emails, narrowing out numbers and guests and locations with the property owner... we are still waiting on the final paperwork to set our date. I feel like we probably wouldn't be dealing with this if we were working with a specific venue that had all this stuff already set, but alas- to get our dream day, it entails some patience (which I'm losing pretty early in the game, uh oh) and calmness on our part.

What I think is the roughest right now is the fact that having the wedding at Tamarack meant we had to tone down the guest list for the wedding to just family, which was totally doable. But we decided to plan a summer 2010 party for the local friends that we aren't going to be inviting to the wedding itself. This summer party is only like 3 or 4 months away, so obviously we have to move forward on these plans asap.. but we can't necessarily do that until we make SURE that we're having the wedding at Tamarack.. which we are not yet, since we haven't signed any papers. *SIGH*

Okay I've got that off my chest. If we haven't heard back from the owner by tomorrow, we're going to call her. And until then, I'm going to try not to think about it.

Also, one of my bridesmaids Theresa who is getting married this fall went dress shopping this weekend and posted some pictures up for those who weren't around... she's so beautiful :) I'm looking at maybe going up there to spend some time with her and Jay once they're done with classes this spring.