The Midnight Move-in

At 10:30 this past Monday night, when I would normally be getting ready for bed, I was instead doing this:

Alone in Nathan's new apartment, lying on the floor.

Meanwhile, Nathan was traveling from his old apartment driving this:

After several relatively warm days, it snowed the evening Nathan chose to move his furniture. Nathan was driving a 14-foot U-Haul, and his brother Tim was driving Nathan's car. A trip that normally would take about 1 and a half hours took 5 hours, with over an hour at a dead stop thanks to a collision between two semis.

I arrived at the apartment at 7:00, and I ended up spending more than four hours there before they arrived. I talked to one of my bridesmaids for about an hour and a half, and the rest of the time I just paced around, hoping they would make it safely.

The crazy part is, despite the fact that we didn't even begin unloading until 11:30, we brought in EVERYTHING that night except for the couch! We definitely have Tim to thank for that one - there's no way Nathan and I would have even attempted it if he hadn't started moving stuff in. I ended up leaving around 1:30 and made it to bed an hour later.

But now, finally, another important step in the wedding planning process is complete: living in the same city! (I'm technically just over the county line, but still in the same metropolitan area.) Nathan has wanted to move here since we started talking back in September of 2008.

Unfortunately, since Nathan works 1:00-9:30 and gets Sundays and Mondays off, we won't be able to spend a whole lot of time together, but we'll at least have Sundays and Monday evenings. I'm just happy that the travel time between us has decreased once again. We were originally 2 hours apart, then 1 hour 15 minutes when I moved, and now 40 minutes! And, in just 5 months, I'll be moving to the new apartment as well. At least I'll get to move everything over gradually, and it most likely won't be snowing in June.

1 month down, 5 to go!

We've made quite a bit of progress in the wedding planning process during the first month of our engagement. According to TheKnot.com, I still have 79 overdue items, but I think parts of their timeline are a little riciculous. Do I really need to start addressing my invitations right now?

Here are some things we have done...

We have a venue! This picture was taken today, and look how green it is! It should be really pretty in June. There are trees all the way around.

I'm sure a setting like this isn't for every bride, but it works for this one.

I tried on dresses, although I haven't bought one just yet. Look, my skin is darker than the dress!

I designed the wedding invitations, including this nifty little wedding monogram.

I think this whole 6-month engagement thing is going to work out all right. I'm more interested in creating a marriage than a wedding. Yes, I want our wedding day to be nice and go smoothly, but I don't want to spend so much time worrying about little details that I can't even enjoy being engaged.

Wedding "Branding"

Although we've only officially been engaged for two and a half weeks, I already have plenty of ideas about what I want our wedding to look like. I had ideas about dresses before I was even dating anyone, and my overall vision has developed considerably since then. Nathan has more opinions about wedding planning than a lot of guys, but he's really left the color and design aspects up to me (with the exception of tux styles).

I've always wanted to have deep red/maroon/cranberry as my color, along with black and white. I also seem to be drawn to organic curves and scroll patterns.

This is my wedding inspiration board...or, as I prefer to call it, my wedding branding. :)

My biggest challenge has been finding photos of bridesmaid dresses and bouquets with the right colors. I changed the colors in three of the above images. I'm not worried about getting the right colors for the bouquets in real life since I know white lilies and maroon roses exist. However, finding a maroon bridesmaid dress has proved to be a challenge. Hopefully some that look too purple or orange on the computer screen will look better in person. I really don't want to have to resort to black.