this past weekend justin and his dad worked for hours at our house putting in hardwood floors, they look so great! i helped a little but having no clue what to do, i felt i was better off sunning on the porch ;) but really, it was a lot of tedious, hard work and i am so lucky i will have a handy husband! everyone was definetly sore the next day. on tuesday my job gave me the day off to get misc. wedding items checked off my list. we applied for our marriage license, had our final meeting with the chapel coordinator, met with our photographer at northwestern, and my mom, sister and i took our dresses in to get altered. my mom said i looked like a life-size barbie in my dress :) i hope all the alterations work out!

this friday i'm going to have to do a little shopping, because my bridemaids and friends are taking me to chicago for my bachelorette party next weekend! we fly out friday morning. i cant wait to get away, and see what kind of surprises they have up their sleeves....i am literally counting down the days! that's all for now...enjoy your day!

we just got back from dropping off my rings at shane co. to get them custom designed for the wedding! im lucky and i get two wedding bands, one on each side of my engagement ring. i'm really excited to see how they look together! we won't get them sodered together until a day or two before the wedding, but they are being customized now, just in case we need to change anything-we'll have plenty of time. all these little details are so boring but it feels soooo good to get the little nit-picky things accomplished that i had to blog about it!

happy birthday to me!

thanks to my family and friends, i had a great birthday...the weekend went by surprisingly slow so i got to enjoy every minute of it! one of my bridesmaids monica picked me up early on saturday, along with my favorite drink from caribou (she's good)... and took me to the salon ultimo for a carribean spa treatment. it was AMAZING and just what i needed to get away from all the stress of planning. it was an exfoliating, detoxifying, and moisturizing treatment with a hour and a half massage...lets just say it was heavenly. i really really appreciated it. thanks mon! that night justin told me he was cooking me a special dinner (or so i thought) and i totally believed him because he's an awesome cook. after my sister's soccer game we headed over to our townhome where i was surprised by all my friends waiting there! we grilled and played games and had a really good time. i had told jenni and justin that i didnt want to do anything for my birthday and of course they didn't listen :) it was the perfect birthday!

friday again :) last weekend we finished our vows and now we're on to ceremony music. it's stressful but i'm really glad we are planning every part of the ceremony because it will really be a reflection of us as a couple. i finally got to hear jenni practice the song she's singing during our unity candle, if she doesn't get too nervous! she sounds great and i have a feeling it will be very emotional! i finally decided on my hairstyle for the wedding, and i love my hair and makeup artist. her name is julie swenson of smart and chic brides, and she works with the models on project runway (bravo tv). we just found out that our engagement proposal story was picked to win over thousands of her other clients. so that was pretty cool, and it is goes to show how awesome my proposal was (good job justin!) ;) they are sending me a box of wedding day beauty products from aveda. im pretty excited.

tomorrow's my birthday so im hoping to take a little break from all the planning and just relax.

t g i f !

happy friday everyone! the weekend couldn't have come any sooner. tonight we are making our unity candle and working on our vows....and tomorrow my mom's best friends are throwing me another bridal shower (i know, enough already...i can't help that everyone wants to throw me one! hehe) but i am very excited. i did my best not to peek at my registry so this time i will be surprised! i think that's all for now. enjoy the weekend!

i just need to blog about the amazing man i am about to marry! he can read me like a book, he knows exactly what's on my mind, and what i'm thinking or feeling. he just gets me. i am so lucky to have found someone who loves and adores me so much. ok enough love stuff!...back to the nitty gritty planning....

we spoke with our pastor last night, who is flying in from pennsylvania just to marry us. he was my youth pastor and mentor growing up and i feel so blessed to be able to have him marry justin and i. he's just as excited. we went through the order of the ceremony and all the little details. we've decided to write our own take on traditional vows to make them more personable and meaningful. it's really getting down to the wire, and we can't wait.

we meet with our florist on sunday!

we just finished up our last marriage counseling session last week...it was a fun experience. we actually learned a lot about ourselves, and about each other. we took a compatibility test that compared our ideas and thoughts on different situations in marriage and life, and found out that we had matched all our answers after talking through them. it was pretty cool to hear that all the areas were "strengths" for us and not "growth areas." i guess you learn to really know someone after so many years of being together! our counselor told us we are one of the happiest and healthiest couples she's had in pre-marital counseling :)