Shiny! Part 3! and stories of somethings

I know this is a little late coming since Part 1 and Part 2 of the Shiny! series were um ... a long time ago. But! But! I now have all my wedding jewelry, and a couple of stories to boot.

Originally, I was going to borrow jewelry from Aunt Hyena as my "something borrowed." Over time, that kind of fell through as she didn't have a lot of jewelry that was silver or white gold, or I didn't find anything that I liked, or the things I did like were broken. It's okay though. I have an even better "something borrowed" now, which I am not going to share here because it deserves a post of its own. (Coming soon to a theatre near you: The Amazing Story of Two Women, Two Weddings and an Unexpected Swap! It will make you laugh! It will make you cry ... because you're laughing too hard! Ebert and Roper give it two thumbs up!)

Oh, the crummy things you can throw together in Photoshop... (top left and bottom pics by moi, top right pic by Bridesmaid J.)

Because I'm nice, I won't leave you hanging on any of the others. :)

My "something old" is this embroidered hanky that Mom Hyena had in her dresser. This dresser is huge and has a million drawers, and she has all sorts of cool and weird stuff locked up in there, like all our school photos from our childhoods, vintage perfume bottles she inherited and ... um, stuff I thought the Tooth Fairy should have gotten rid instead of keeping in a drawer. ANYWAY. A few months ago when I was home, she found this hanky, which belonged to Mom Hyena's grandmother.

It's not in our wedding colors, but I think it's pretty and it'll be something other than Kleenex to cry on when I inevitably start bawling during the ceremony. Now the question is, what to do with it?

While Mom Hyena and I were digging around for somethings, H-Dad got in on the action too. You know that last part of the line that many people skip over, the "and a sixpence in your shoe"? Well, H-Dad has been collecting coins for a really long time, and turns out he had a sixpence in his closet!

I already told you about my garter, which is going to be my "blue" something.

And finally, the part you've all been waiting for ... "something new." Now we could get technical and say that any number of things could be new. My dress, my veil, my shoes, etc. ... but for the sake of showing you shiny things, we'll call this one my jewelry.

Bling!

The earrings are also blingy like the bracelet, but I wanted to show you the cute flowers!

Think they'll look good with my dress? :) I was originally looking for something a little more delicate for the bracelet, but I kind of ran out of time before my bridal portraits.

Prep Work

We just wrapped up our pre-marriage counseling with our pastor. Even with three counseling sessions to get through — one per month in the three months before the wedding — we didn't want to wait until three months before the wedding to think about the marriage that will be following our giant awesome party. Because of this, we decided to do a little bit more leg work, so this post is going to be about some of the ways we've been preparing for a successful marriage.

• Counseling — Obviously, we met with Pastor Jason, who is officiating our ceremony. This was actually quite fun; we've gotten to know him pretty well over the past year, (Mr. H plays basketball with him every week!) he's pretty young and has a good sense of humor, so nothing was too awkward! Like I mentioned, we had three sessions with him:

1. The first session was an introduction to getting to know us as a couple. We were required to put together a list of three things we love about each other, and three things we hate. Pastor Jason said this would be helpful for when he planned session #2, since he could figure out right off the bat if there were any "problem" areas in our relationship.
2. Session #2 was an overview of some of the issues married couples face. These were the things we needed to start thinking about now — before we're married — including finances, supporting each other, time together vs. time apart, family planning and the dreaded sex monologue (thank goodness for monologue and not dialogue, yes?). Luckily, most of the issues we had talked about ahead of time, but we did need to come up "us" time; too often, we see each other when it's convenient, and we don't have set times or dates that are just for the two of us, so we've started setting that time aside for each other.
3. Our final session was to go over the ceremony section by section so we could understand ahead of time what it is we're promising, what those vows mean and what the covenant with God is all about. I pretty much could not stop smiling during this session! We also got to discuss our reading options, music choices and our desire to take communion as part of the ceremony, as well as figure out a few of the nagging logistics I had lurking in my brain.

image via Made in Atlantis

• Fireproof — I put the movie Fireproof on my Netflix after I saw a recommendation for it on the 'Bee, and we watched it a while back. If you can get past the fairly terrible writing, it had a pretty good message. This couple is having marital troubles and decide they want a divorce. The husband goes to his father and complains about how it's just not going to work, he gets no respect, etc., and his dad challenges him to a 40-day "Love Dare" to try and repair the damage that has been done to the relationship. The movie has some good messages about putting each other first, breaking habits that destroy intimacy and generally treating each other the way you'd like them to treat you. (Note: The movie has a lot of emphasis on Christianity, but I'd recommend it even if Jesus isn't your cup of tea. It doesn't matter your religiosity; it's always good to treat your partner well, which is the whole point.) You can also find the 40-day challenge on the movie's Web site (I linked it in the title for you).

via Amazon

• "The 5 Love Languages" — I just finished reading this and passed it off to Mr. Hyena, and he read it pretty quickly. (Have I mentioned that he hates reading? I'm impressed that he got through it so fast!) This book was really good. Really good. It's about how we give love to others, and how others receive love through five "languages": words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service and physical touch. It was very eye-opening. We all feel loved in different ways, and we need to learn to better speak each others' languages in order to love each other in a way that makes a lasting difference. Mr. H kept trying to get me to tell him what mine are so he can skip ahead to those chapters! I very much recommend reading it, and it made for a great discussion.

What are you doing for your marriage prep? Do you have any recommendations for us?

Getting My Butt to the Gym

My New Year's Resolution this year was not — contrary to the title of this post — to go to the gym more. Resolving to do that wouldn't help get me there, since I pretty much hate working out. Sure, I go to Flow classes pretty often (combo Pilates, yoga and Tai chi), but that's more for stress reduction and relaxation than exercise.

Instead, my resolution was to try new things this year. This year a lot of things are happening that are going to be new experiences: our wedding, my first time leaving the United States, going parasailing ... and I want to really hunger for adventures in 2011.

One of the things that has been on my "Life List" for awhile was to run a 5K. To this point I don't think I've ever willingly run a day in my life (and I'm not exactly sure why that's on my list), but when Matt wanted to sign up for a 5K this coming March, I told him I would run it too. And you know what I discovered? Running ain't so bad, as long as I can get motivated to do it. I'm following the Couch to 5K program, and for $2 or $3 I bought the C25K iPhone app. It's pretty cool; you can play your own music while you run, and it counts down your workout for you and tells you when to run and when to walk. Also, it's got a journal feature so you can track your progress, which might be my favorite part. Not going to lie, the app is kind of buggy, but when it runs perfectly (maybe 85 percent of the time), it's a really cool tool. (No one's paying me to say that.)

(See! Running can be cute!)

I'm a little doubtful that I'll actually get up to running three miles before March, but at least I'm making progress. That's gotta count for something. Right now I'm hovering around running/walking two miles per workout. If nothing else, I'm going to look totally sexyfine in my wedding dress.

What kind of stuff is on your Life List? Anybody else doing the 5K training? (I'm always up for support groups!)

Music Good Enough to Eat

Where we left off on the music front, we had decided to emcee our own wedding. This turned out to be a really fun idea; Mr. Hyena and I did all our recording in GarageBand on my MacBook in one night, and it didn't take very long. Once all the serious announcements were done, we spent a good long time playing with the settings and singing ridiculous things just to see how awesome we could sound. ("I Will Survive" duet in Diva voice featuring Mr. H and my kitty-boo? Yes, please!)

Anyway, we decided to overlay Mr. Hyena's emcee-ing over the intro to the songs for each event, because he doesn't want there to be silence and then HIS BOOMING VOICE in the middle of our reception. I am SUPER PUMPED for the songs we picked. Especially for the cake cutting.

I had a vibe I was going for: I wanted the music to be cohesive, and I wanted to choose something unique that you don't hear at every wedding. I wanted songs that were upbeat and danceable, in case it didn't take that long, and people wanted to get back to dancing. I chose a few different songs because I intend to cut the cake with Mr. Hyena and then eat a piece or three. Maybe other people will want to do the same. :)

If not, that's okay. More cake for me.

Mmm sexy cowboys singing while I nosh on buttercream. What could be better?

What will play when you cut your cake? Do your pets sing duets?

In which I worry for nothing.

Remember how I was worried about my wedding band looking weird against my e-ring? No? Well that's probably because I didn't tell you. I was WORRIED. Even after they e-mailed me the picture of what my wedding ring was supposed to look like separate from my e-ring, I wanted to see what they would look like together. I went to the designer's Web site, but couldn't find my exact set. Instead, I found this:

(source)

It's a lovely set, but not exactly what I had in mind for my own wedding ring. I wanted my band to sit closer to the basket of my ring, not flush to the top of the ring. And I also wanted it to look more symmetrical.  Who knew I was so picky about jewelry?

So there I was, worrying we were going to have to get a second band to make my ring look even, and worrying I was going to hate it. A couple months ago it arrived at the jewelry store. Mr. Hyena wants to keep it there a little while longer, since it's still insured while the store has it, but over lunch one day we went to go visit it, try it on, calm my fears, etc.

It's perfect. Absolutely perfect.

I'm going to wait until I actually have it in my possession to go photo crazy, but don't worry, I'll get pictures up as soon as I can. :)

Have you worried a ridiculous amount about a particular aspect of your wedding? What was it?

You blockhead!

via Arts Journal / Charlie Brown cartoon by Charles Schultz

You may notice something about our Web site: I am a bad, bad bride.

I decided that I didn't want to deal with hotel blocks, and that everyone could put on their grown-up britches and book their own rooms. Why? Well, at work I coordinate the events our company goes to, and the company has a set amount they usually want to spend on hotels. The room blocks are always way more than they're willing to spend, so they look elsewhere every single time.

My family is pretty cheap. Mr. Hyena's family lives close enough that many of them will just drive home after the wedding. Many of our friends are still in school or recently out of college, and likely wouldn't want to spend much for a place to stay. It seems silly to set aside a hotel block when I will eventually — inevitably — have to foot the cost for unused rooms. Plus, I'm lazy and I just didn't want to bother. Too big a hassle.

Besides, this being a college town, there are tons of places to stay. And because we do want to help out our guests a little, we did list a few nearby hotels on our Web site, and I even Yelped them to make sure they had good reviews!

Are you setting aside hotel blocks? Am I an awful, awful bride?

This Is Your Year

I was born in the Chinese "Year of the Rabbit." My Nana keeps track of these things, and informed me at Christmas that the Year of the Rabbit only comes around every 12 years.

(source)

She told me, This is your year. I like this sentiment a lot, because now I feel compelled to make this a really great year. After all, another one like it won't be around until I'm *gulp* thirtymumble...

I'm getting married this year. It seems a lot closer on this side of the holidays! I went looking through some of my wedding closets (yes, it's plural now), and seeing some of our first projects, I can't believe just how ridiculously long we've been engaged. Our first and only engageversary is right around the corner! In true man form, Matt has already forgotten what day he proposed, but lucky me, he remembers what day the wedding is. So far.

This is my year. But really, it's only mine until May. Then it'll be ours, if I feel like sharing. :)

2011 brides, what up! This is your year too! What are you looking forward to?