My E-Ring

I love my engagement ring. Mr. Snowflake picked out my ring with no input from me or my sister. I think he did a beautiful job. I probably would have picked something different and in the end not loved it. I love that he took the initiative and found something he thought I'd like.

Sorry for the bad picture, I haven't figured out how to get in close and the camera to not get all blurry. I still love it though. We're in the process of finding me a band (or two :) - more for another blog) since this is a custom ring from Borshiems (gotta love the silver box with the maroon ribbon). The best part of my ring is that the top is fairly flat, so I rarely catch it on things or cut myself.
What do you love about your e-ring? Did you have any input into the purchase?

My Invitations - Part 2

I already showed you my invitations, but here is the additional part I'm adding. It's the RSVP and additional information card. I'll print it on Lake colored paper that I bought from Paper Source.

What additional items are you putting in your invitations?

The Band Problem

We have a problem with our band. I don't know what to do. Mr. S HAD to have a live band for the wedding, it was one of the top five things we had to have for the wedding on his list. While I was MIA in Chicago for work last fall, he picked a band with our wedding coordinator and signed the contract. He picked the MightyNish Band, check them out here: http://www.mightynishband.com/. Once I got back into the planning mode, we started discussing the timeline, activities, etc and I finally looked at the contract. The contract says that they'll start at or about 5:30 pm. The problem was that our cocktail hour was going to take place at 5 pm. I kept asking him to call them and get the time worked out and he kept telling me it was fine, they're easy to work with, no problem. He still has not talked to them about it. Yesterday, he decided he'd rather not push them for the 5 pm time, I don't know why, he's being weird.
So here's my problem, I already have my invitations and they say that the ceremony is going to start at 6 pm. These are our options:
1. Have the cocktail hour at 5 pm still and use an ipod/canned music for that period.
2. Have the ceremony at 5:30, Cocktails 6 to 7 with the band playing - this pushes my schedule around and I'll have to put a correction in the invitations - which may confuse people, but may be fine too. (He thought we should just WRITE the new time on the invitations - gasp!)
What would you do?

My 8...

It's been a really hectic week and I haven't accomplished a whole lot of wedding stuff - in fact I'm behind. I saw this on someone else's blog and I thought I'd do one of my own. Please see below for my 8...
8 Things I look Forward to:
Going to the lake next weekend to get a bunch of things checked off my to-do list
Memorial Day weekend
SUMMER and warmer weather
Trying my new Mary Kay stuff (thanks to my SIL)
Summer tans
Doing all my DIY projects for the wedding
Going to Wicked at the end of the month J
Having the wedding in a few months and going on a really nice trip with my new husband

8 Things I Did Yesterday:
Worked, Worked, and Worked
Saw my daughter’s last soccer game for the season
Watched the Story of Us with FH
Talked to FH about relationship stuff (while watching the movie)
Worked out
Checked out Weddingbee posts and blogs all day
Helped daughters with homework
Cleaned my E-ring (sorry it wasn’t a very exciting day yesterday)

8 Things I Wish/Hope I Could Do:
Run everyday
Go see my mom and grandma
I REALLY would like to sell my house (3 mortgages suck! Even when you have renters in the 2 extra houses).
Not have to work (I'd gladly give someone else my job :) )
If I can’t not work – I’d like to evolve my job into something else.
Travel to Italy, Hawaii, Ireland, Australia
Be the best mom possible for my kids and raise them to be great adults themselves
Be the best wife my FH deserves

8 On My To-Do List:
Need to email planner about next weekend and coordinate with other vendors we plan on visiting
Print the extra cards we’re including in the invitations and get it all put together
Complete my DIY projects (card holder, jars and hooks, grooms kit, bathroom baskets, flip flop labels)
Finish the schedule and collect all contact numbers
Compile music for different events and work with band
Lose 18 pounds!
Shop for Rings
Shop for all of Mr. S’s and the boy’s stuff

I promise I'll have something better next week, hope you have a great weekend and Happy Mother's Day to my fellow moms out there!

What are your 8?

He's keeping something from me

No, it's not a cheating, dirty-liar kind of secret (at least I hope not!), but it's a secret between us that's driving me nuts!
Mr. Snowflake told me last fall that he had a surprise for me at the wedding. I'm not good with surprises, I HATE surprises (worst b-day ever, the year a surprise party was thrown). So the thought of something being sprung on me in the middle of the wedding drives me NUTS! (Remember, I'm a major planner and a little bit of a control freak - I'm not a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of girl) Lately I've been working on a schedule that pretty much accounts for every moment of our wedding weekend. In the midst of asking him to take care of some band details, I followed up with a question about the surprise, when is it going to take place, etc because I needed to put it in my schedule. He told me not to worry about it, it's all planned. I told him he didn't have to give me any details, I just need to know the time and the amount of time it'd take place. He shot back that it was all scheduled and I didn't need to worry about it. Then I started getting pissed because it wasn't in MY schedule.
Needless to say, he still won't give me ANY details. It's SO frustrating! He just keeps saying it's taken care of and in our schedule. Now I've been over that schedule a million times and have combed it and perfected it to a T, there is NO surprise scheduled anywhere in there, so how can he tell me it's all planned and scheduled? Augh!
I guess I just need to calm down and figure out how to work my girlie magic to get it out of him - or maybe ask him in his sleep :)
What surprises or secrets has your FH kept from you?

The Importance of a Wedding Website

After we decided on the what, where, and when, I went about designing a wedding website. (This is our site - I LOVE dragonflies!)

These sites have become very popular over the last few years, especially in the day of myspace pages, personal blogs, and twitter. There are a lot of free sites out there. You could always design and then host your own site too. I ended up going with the program on WedShare and bought the domain name for 18 months. I think you could have a free one, but the address would start out www.wedshare/name of site.com. You need to have important information posted on your site (the when and the where), as well as additional information like hotels, other activities, etc. There's also extras like pictures, blogs, forums, guestbooks, and other goodies. We're going to use our website to keep track of all of our guests and our RSVPs too. Then we emailed our family members that we had addresses for and put the address on our STD to let people know about it (the who and how). For our wedding the site is important, most people will be traveling to the wedding, so they need information about the area, etc. But there will also be a lot of family and friends that are not coming, but still want to know what's going on. This is our "wedding communication" piece that can easily be changed and updated and the information goes out to most of our guests. So for us, this was an important piece to our wedding planning.

What tools have you used to broadcast information to your guests?

The Plan Update 1

Here's my first "Plan Update". I saw my trainer yesterday and I've lost my required two pounds for last week (yay - no second session - I don't know when I would have fit it in anyway). We've also decided to mix up my training. He says that now that the weather is nice, all we're doing is running, abs, running, abs, etc. He said we spent the winter bulking up the muscles, so it's time to get in all the cardio possible. That could be a little bit of my weight gain - last time we did all of the measuring I had the most lean body mass I've ever had, so that's a good thing, right? So, I'll be trying to get in as much cardio and abs as I can this week, hopefully I'm able to make the goal again.
The biggest reason is because I'm still afraid to pick up my dress that came in. As excited as I was, it then set in that it's not going to fit (I had them order it smaller because I thought I was going to lose some weight before now). Hopefully I can muster up the courage this week and I can figure out just how much work I have to do before I can fit into it. I'll keep you updated.
Is there anything wedding-related that you were afraid of/dreading doing?