Mr. Paul

Mr. Paul is the man that will be marrying us!

Here is a picture of him that I took from my dad's Facebook. Mr. Paul is on the far left, with my dad and a couple of other neighborhood guys - Mr. Foley and Mr. Burman.

Mr. Paul is a dear family friend and is part of one of the families that I considered my second family as a kid growing up. I have a lot of memories of him growing up. One of the coolest memories I have of him is that he was the first person I told after I found out that Allison and my dad were pregnant with Jakob. I was soooo excited to tell everyone that I was going to be a sister, and he's the first person I told. And I still remember that he guessed what was going on before we even told him (we all walked up and said, "guess what?" and he said, "you're pregnant!") and he was SO thrilled about it. Then, before Jake was born, he banded with me and agreed that if the baby was a boy he should be named Zachary. We made a pact that we would call the baby Zeke no matter what. That lasted for about a month... but it still meant a lot to me when I was 13 that he stuck with me!

He's also the guy that got me into hockey and the Caps. He took me and his daughter, Kelsey, out to a practice one time and I was instantly hooked. After that, he often drove Kelsey and I to the rink so that we could watch games together with his season tickets. If it wasn't for him I probably never would have learned about hockey and how awesome it is!

So fast forward to Memorial Day of this year. He asked me how the wedding planning was going and I told him pretty much everything was planned but that we still had a major hole: someone to marry us. I told him of our dilemma: we want someone we know to marry us. Our first idea was Jason's sister-in-law, Emily, and she was really flattered about it... but then we realized that if both Matt (Jason's brother and best man) and Emily were in the wedding, their daughter Esme who (will only be a year old at the time of the wedding) wouldn't have her mommy or daddy around during the ceremony and that might cause issues. Well, we certainly didn't want an unhappy little niece. So I explained to Mr. Paul that we were stuck. He jabbed me in the arm and said, "Well, I'll marry you!!!" Now, I think he was half-joking... but I as soon as he said it I said, "OKAY!"

So there you have it! Mr. Paul is marrying us! And we're both THRILLED!!!!!!

"Because... you know... we're getting married."

Recently it came to our attention that we should be looking for wedding bands because... you know... we're getting married. Well, we were lucky enough to do some one-stop shopping this weekend and we now have wedding bands in the making! And we even stuck to our (very) low budget that I made for them! Woo hoo! And, because we find it funny, it also needs to be said that Jason was the high maintenance one (and his ring cost 4x as much as mine). When he explained what he wanted, he had three rings to do it - he wanted the width of one, the milgrain (miligrain?) of another, and the finish of yet another. I found what I wanted and said, "I want this EXACT ring. Same size, same everything."

We also looked at tuxes. The vest colors kind of matched the bridesmaids dresses... I say kind of but they really didn't match at all. Can we say color clash? I'm not quite sure what we're going to do about that. So we're not done with tuxes yet. Here's my scruffy groom modeling the not-so-matching vest and dress:



We also hit up an Ikea sale this weekend to get real wood living room furniture for half price. We're replacing nearly everything we have to get matching and better quality stuff. We're in the process of selling our old stuff on craigslist which is great because we'll have less to move in August! We wound up getting 3 of the 6 things we wanted (a TV stand and two small bookcase to go next to it) because people had rushed and bought things before us. But then the strangest thing happened... while I sat there moping about how we shouldn't have eaten free breakfast before we shopped, people started returning the pieces they had just bought. So we wound up getting the desk and the bigger bookcase we wanted as well! People are crazy. Absolutely crazy. I don't get it. The only thing we didn't walk away with that we wanted was a china-like cabinet - which we'll eventually buy anyway (at full price - boo-hiss) because my aunt is giving me my grandmother's beautiful china when we get married. Next to re-do: our bedroom furniture. But that will wait until after we're married.

I also got my first fitting for my dress last weekend and will have my second fitting in 2 weeks!

Did I mention we're under the 100 day mark now? 97 days and counting!

Visiting the Lake

We went to the lake last weekend to see Matt, Emily, and little Esme... and wound up seeing quite a few other friends and family! It was a great time and we even managed to get a few pictures!

Emily and Esme (in the cute little outfit we got for her)

Bill and Aunt Diane

Little Ru

Matt and Esme

Ella and Esme with Grandma

Us with Esme - she is too darn cute!

Happy 4th of July, everyone! We're headed to Iwo Jima to see the fireworks tonight. Should be a fun night!