Island Time

As you all know, we'll be cruisin' around the Caribbean for our honeymoon. Last week we finally booked our excursions, so now I can tell you about all the grand adventures we're going to have! I am super pumped!

First Port: Key West, Florida

Eep!

Mr. Hyena has always been a little bit of a daredevil; he's gone skydiving, likes thrill rides and thinks all the scariest tasks on The Amazing Race look super fun. And me? I am terrified of free-falling, roller coasters, jumping off high things and things I've never tried before ... so when he suggested we go parasailing on the "first leg" of our trip, I was very hesitant. That's high up! And it probably moves fast!

He finally convinced me that it would be fun, though. We watched a video of other people parasailing, and it didn't look like they were going fast at all — just chillaxing and taking in the gorgeous views from the sky. I can deal with that! The parachute even has a smiley face on it, so it can't possibly be scary, right? Plus, agreeing to parasailing has gotten Mr. H so excited that the excitement is contagious. :)

Second Port: Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands

I've never been out of the country before, so the stop in Grand Cayman will be my first foray into being a world traveler! For this stop, we decided to go snorkeling. I've snorkeled once before — when my family went to Hawaii one year — and it was so much fun! (Mom Hyena wouldn't put her face in the water because she was convinced she would drown. I told her if she starts to drown, take her face back out of the water!)

Anyway, the adventure we signed up for is snorkeling a coral reef off the coast of Grand Cayman, and going to "Stingray City" to see its namesake! Oh, and apparently stingrays eat squid and we can feed them. Super awesome.

Third and Final Port: Ocho Rios, Jamaica

I've heard that the biggest and most famous attraction in Ocho Rios is Dunn's River Falls. We'll get to hike one of the waterfalls, and swim in the pool at the bottom of it! This excursion also goes through Enchanted Gardens botanical garden, which also has a bunch of waterfalls inside. Prettyyyyyy. I love doing nature walks, and I'm glad Mr. Hyena wanted to do this one too!

What are you doing for your honeymoon? Do you have any grand adventures planned? Tell me about them!

(all images from Carnival Web site)

SHOUT! ... Now waiiiiit a minute...

After my millions of questions about how to figure out the music, I wound up bawling all over Mr. Hyena about the playlists, and the bar, and how I can't deal with this wedding crap anymore and we should just elope because no one will like our wedding anyway WAHHHH.

via Bridal Buds / cartoon by Adam Zyglis

And Mr. H came up with a brilliant, albeit unconventional way to deal with all the mini "events" during the reception.

We would emcee our own wedding. Five months in advance.

I know what you're thinking. You don't have to say it. I know. But hear me out.

Here's the plan: we have four "events" we want to include in the reception: Anniversary Dance, Cake Cutting, Bouquet Toss, Garter Toss.

• My awesome future sister-in-law already volunteered to emcee the Anniversary Dance. What would we do without her? Since that requires more than just one announcement at the beginning, I think it's a good idea to have a real person speaking.

• For the other three events, we will use my computer to pre-record our announcements with voiceovers that say things like, "YO, WE'RE CUTTING THIS HERE CAKE, PAY ATTENTION!" except in a classy, nice way that doesn't make us sound like rednecks. We will insert the sound clips into our dance playlist along with a few slower non-dance songs, so that we have time to cut the cake, and everyone can get their cake and eat it too before the dance party starts back up. Also, this way Bridesmaid A won't have to switch playlists 15 times during the reception.

• We'll do the same thing for the bouquet and garter tosses, except play only the one song for each event and put announcements before each song begins.

I know this is just "one more thing" to DIY (ie. one more thing I have to think about), but luckily this seems like a project I can get out of the way pretty quickly, and then I can stop freaking out about it.

Is this idea totally nuts? Has my brain reached boiling point? Do I need to be carted off to the loony bin? I'm expecting you to tell me truly! I'm a woman on the edge!

(Or you know, if you think it's a cool idea and could work, I'd like to hear that too. ^_^)

You know this makes me want to SHOUT!

For the first time since we got engaged, I recently started to freak out a little bit about our reception music. We'll be joining the masses rockin' an iPod/laptop reception, and I have very little grasp on the logistics.

via iWorld-CLUB
Panic! Adorable Panic!

Sure, I've got a basic outline of the music we'd like to play for the various parts of the reception, and we've got plenty of time to finalize it. I've talked to the woman who owns Downtown 202 about some of the logistics of hooking up a laptop (she said to come in a few weeks in advance to make sure everything will hook up properly, or just burn CDs of all the music).

What I wasn't sure about, though, is how the actual reception is gonna go down. Obvs, we would like to have music for the anniversary dance, cake cutting and the bouquet and garter tosses, as well as plenty of time to cut a rug. This is where it got complicated in my brain.

• When we select music for these moments, should they be embedded into the rest of the dance playlist (for minimal playlist-switching on the part of Bridesmaid A), or each event on a separate playlist?

• If each one is on a separate playlist, do I need to separate the entire dancing playlist into sets so there isn't any repeats in the music?

• Without an emcee, how do we let everyone know it's time for each event?

These questions were bouncing around in my head, unsolved for a couple of days, in which I was almost frustrated enough to blow the whole thing off and just hire a DJ. I had worked the iPod at Bridesmaid A's wedding, but since her wedding was mid-afternoon with no meal and no toasts and not many announcements, I don't remember how she accounted for these little things (and neither does she). I mainly just recall hitting play on her cocktail hour playlist, and then switching it over to the dance playlist when she and her new hubby walked in.

Luckily, Mr. H came up with an answer to my many questions ... and I promise you'll think it's crazy. You'll want to stay tuned for this.

If you had an iPod reception, how did you deal with the little "events"?

Throwing Money at Our Problems

I'll admit, up until a couple months ago I did not consider myself a DIY Bride. It wasn't until I was talking to a Planning Buddy J about our corsages a while back that I realized how many details I've unintentionally DIY-ed.

While I was not planning to be a DIY queen, I DID consider myself to be a Budget Bride. And oh ho ho did I have big ideas for that one before I got knee-deep in planning.

Wedding cake? Oh, we'll just get the local HEB grocery to make it! Catering? HEB has party platters too! Flowers? ... You may be sensing a theme. I freaking love HEB.

via The Dallas Observer
Oh HEB, you are so good to me...

All of these could have been great ideas, but unfortunately there was still a heavy DIY element to these ideas. And frankly, my poor little bride brain couldn't handle it.

I realized I would rather spend the extra cash on our cakes in order to have them done by a professional and delivered to us, instead of selecting from the pre-made "cakes we know how to make" bakery booklet and picking it up ourselves the morning of the wedding. I would rather pay someone to make really good food that I don't have to figure out how to keep fresh or warm. And, well, you already know how I feel about flowers. I'm pretty sure HEB doesn't regularly stock peonies. Even if they did, my head would explode if I had to wait until the last minute to get them arranged.

At some point, we have to figure out which is worth more: our time or our money? Our money or our sanity?

Now, I realize that I am putting quite a lot of effort into the DIY aspect of our wedding, but I'm justifying that because the majority of the projects I'm taking on were ones that I wanted to work on. I know the limits of my capabilities (I don't think I've ever successfully baked anything; therefore, I should not delude myself into thinking I could make our wedding cake). If a project sounds awful and difficult, I don't want to waste my time doing it.

I'll admit, there are a couple projects that I do NOT want to be working on (like, oh, a DIY BAR, more to come on that later), but I'm trying to keep those to a minimum. I'm not fun when I'm stressed out. I'd like to remain fun!

What kind of bride are you? Is it super weird to love a grocery store so much? :)

It Must Be A Sign

Mr. Hyena's side of the guest list is MUCH larger than mine. We are getting married in a fairly small church. If we went with the traditional "Bride's Side, Groom's Side," my side would be ... sad-looking, and there wouldn't be room for everyone on his side. There won't be any ushers, and I like the idea of letting people sit wherever they want, but I didn't know how to convey that until I saw this sign:

from Mrs. Hippo

Hmm. I could do something like that!

I had a couple 11x14 sheets of glass laying around (they came from some photo frames I bought, but the pictures I matted for them were too thick for the glass to fit back in), and was looking for a way to use them. I used the paint pen I bought for my hanger project and some silver spray paint I found at my parents' house. (Woohoo! This project was fuh-REE!)

Step 1: Get on the computer and type out your text in the font you want the sign to be in. Print it out.

Step 2: Tape your paper with the text to the underside of the glass. The glass should be on top of the words in the way you'd like them to be read.

Step 3: Use the paint pen to trace over the words through the glass. Two coats'll do it!

Step 4: I didn't like the blank space in between the two lines of text, so I drew a heart in between. <3

Step 5: When the text is complete and dry, flip the glass over. Spray paint the backside of the glass (the side without the text). Let it dry. You can do two coats, but I'm lazy and only did one, and it still looks good.

Step 6: Flip it over to reveal your signage masterpiece! (It looks better than this in real life, the glass makes it hard to take a picture of.) The part I love best? Because the paint is on both sides of the glass, automatic drop shadowww!

I plan to prop it up outside the sanctuary on one of those little photo stands.

Are you doing his-side, her-side seating?

Unwanted STDs: A Save-The-Date Saga

During our planning, our wedding invitations have been my baby. I have rounded each corner with love. When I found out the address stickers on the RSVP cards had our Zip Code wrong, I cried as Mr. H and I disassembled each invitation. I can picture that proud moment as each invitation, ready to take on the world, leaves our nest and arrives in each guest's mailbox ...

And I adamantly did NOT want to do save-the-dates. I planned to skip them entirely; that is, until the week of Thanksgiving 2010, when I found out no one — friends, family, bridesmaids, groomsmen — knew when the wedding is.

By the time I realized that I had to do save-the-dates if we wanted people to not plan their vacations during our wedding, we were already past the less-than-six-months-to-go mark. After pouring all my time and energy into "my baby," I just wanted to get the save-the-dates designed, get those puppies out and be done with 'em as quickly as possible. So I did just that.

Considering I only spent like, two days on this project, I'm very pleased with how they turned out! I decided to do postcards to save on stamps, and only one side in color to save on printing costs. (As I didn't plan to do these, there was no budget money set aside for them.) Yes, yes, I am aware that really both sides are in black and white, save for the text, but I love the way they look in B&W! It reminds me of newspaper announcements. :)

I had them printed from Catprint with a full bleed (that means all the way to the edge) on heavy matte cardstock.

How about a closer look:

Sorry the light made the back side show through a little...

Stamps ... those little polar bears don't match anything in the history of everything. Boo. But the new evergreen Forever stamps are kind of cute. :) I also printed off the polka-dot address labels for our guests, since they tie in with our invitation suite (and keep this side of the STD from being totally black and white).

And of course, all engagement photo credits go to Bridesmaid J!

What's your planning "baby"?

"You seem much calmer lately"

... said the older gentleman who leads our Bible study, when our group went out to dinner last night and wedding talk came up.

And he's right. I am calm, now, for the most part. I've gotten all the "heavy" items off my to-do list, and now I'm mainly down to just details. Aside from a few things like booking the bartender and hiring a cop (required by the county, because alcohol will make our guests super rowdy at two o'clock in the afternoon, right?), I can pretty much choose what I want to do and forget the rest as the wedding looms closer.

Ohhhhmmmmm.

But I have been a complete head case up to this point, I'll admit. I have enjoyed being engaged, I have enjoyed talking about wedding details, but I have not enjoyed planning. I'm not much of a procrastinator, so I crammed the bulk of planning into the first eight months in order to "not stress myself out." I have gone into a panic over things I have never cared about before and will never care about again. There was one point in which I showed up at aforementioned Bible study, freaking out about how we would keep the keg cold without having to put it in a trash can. Because obviously, I want the wedding to be beautiful and trash cans do not fit in with the decor.

(Duhhhh: there's a bar and the trash can will go behind it so no one will see it. Hence the bartender.)

I'm glad that I have people around me who help me to realize that yes, I am calm. I'm dense enough that I probably wouldn't have noticed it on my own. I am calm, I am ready, and what you mean I still have to wait five and a half months? Dang it!

So how are you doing?

On the Fifth Day of Christmas...

... my true love gave to meeee ... myyy wedding riiiiiiiing!

Well, not yet. But Matt and I agreed to gift each other our wedding rings for Christmas, and yesterday I picked up his ring from the jeweler!

It's hammered yellow gold with white gold edging, so it matches both his Aggie ring and my rings.

I'm so excited about it, and dying to show him (and make him model it!), but I guess I'll just have to wrap it all pretty-like and forget about it for now. Easier said than done!

Are you doing anything special for Christmas?

(personal photos)

Delusions of Domesticity

In the past few weeks, I swear I've gone into full-on nesting mode. Bride brain? Please. All I want to do is think about decorating our house, and throwing fancy dinner parties in which I serve Top Chef-like culinary masterpieces off the beautiful china we would register for if I could just find a pattern that I like.

Oh, to have problems such as this! I can't find china that jumps out at me that says, "I am BEAUTIFUL and perfect and you have to get me and love me forever!"

I can't decide if I want fine china or everyday china, and therefore cannot make up my mind on the sets themselves. Would I use fine china? Would the everyday china be nice enough to use for special occasions? Is it selfish to register for like, four different sets of dishes so there's always one that fits the occasion?!

Here are some sets I'm considering for Casa de Las Hyenas:

Mikasa "Daylight" via Bed Bath and Beyond

"Romance" Bone China via Bed Bath and Beyond

Kate Spade "Gardner Street Green" via Macy's

Dots via The Pampered Chef

Vera Wang "Wedgwood" via Macy's

This Noritake set is the first that I absolutely adored. Mr. Hyena came home and I was so proud to say, "I finally found dishes that I LOVE!" They are stoneware, would look good in our dining area and would definitely be good for everyday use. So, of course, after many hours of fruitless searching, I found out they are discontinued. And I am a sad panda.

Noritake Colorwave "Mint" via Macy's

Noritake Colorwave "Lilac" via Macy's

Noritake Colorwave "Raspberry" via Macy's

Noritake Colorwave "Peach" via Macy's

Are you registering for china? How did you decide what to get?