Progress Being Made

Last night, Asa and I sat down for hours and did a lot of planning (time of wedding, days of events prior to the wedding, deadlines for stuff , etc!) . If you will look at the website in bold red above this posting, you will find details about the wedding, accommodations, accomodation prices, address of the wedding, day and time of the wedding, bridal/groom party biographies and pictures, etc. I know it is a quite ahead of time, but just so everyone can keep their calendars open and know what the details are:

February 19- Pre-Wedding Party in Fayetteville for our friends

February 26- Pre-Wedding Party/Wedding Shower in Fort Smith for family/ last half of the day/night Bachelorette Party

March 4-6- We are going to TX to get marriage license and make sure everything is squared away with the baker, florist, photographer, etc.

March 11-12 Asa and I are taking a trip

March 18- Rehearsal and Rehearsal Dinner

March 19- Wedding at 4pm

Also for bridesmaids, I just decided knee-length for the dress. Y'all can all get together and decide what neckline and strap width, style y'all want. I want you all to get dresses that yo Dillards u actually like and would want to wear again!! You by no means have to get them at David's Bridal, feel free to get one from Penny's or or whatever you can find to fit your budget. I have also created a facebook group for the grooms party and the bridal party so we can all chat together about stuff like this.

Pretty sure we have chosen a venue!

I am pretty sure we have chosen the venue! As much as I wanted the ranch to be our venue, I wanted it specifically for the beautiful outdoor reception I had put together in my mind. But it is about two hours from Fort Worth, and the weather in March in TX is unpredictable. I also feel like it is a waste of money to pay for just one part of the wedding I would love. So, I think we are going to use The Libety Hotel in Cleburne, TX. It's just a few minutes away from Kara's house and about 20-30 mins from downtown Fort Worth. They have two rooms available to rent. One holds about 35 people, the other holds about 45 people. The lady I spoke to said she didn't know for sure but the manager would possibly give me a discount for renting out both rooms at the same time. The smaller room holding 35 people is $200, the larger room holding $45 people is $250. (excluding a possible discount). I could rent out the smaller room for the ceremony and the larger room for the reception. Table and chairs are included with the rental price, outside catering is allowed, and a projector comes with the rental fee as well so we can plug our music into the projector with a laptop and possibly a slideshow if we want to get really sentimental. Here are pictures of the hotel.

Official

Well I called the school today and asked about Spring Break for 2011. It is from March 21-25 so the official date of the wedding is March 19!!!

Idea for Ceremony!!!!!

Here is an idea for what we are thinking about the ceremony!! See the lattice in the sunroom? We want to completely cover it in toule. Then see the columns? We want to string pink toule from top to bottom. We want to take an entire strand of Christmas lights and put it behind the pink toule and just let it hand in a straight line. We want to hang pink Chinese lanterns in the trees on the outside of the sunroom. I also want the wedding aisle to be lined with candles!! The tree trunks on the outside could also be wrapped fully in pink and white "christmas" lights!!!

More Accomplished in Texas

Well our trip to TX was semi-successful this past weekend. We had some communication issues. We went to meet with a baker in Burleson on Saturday. I had called Thursday and asked if we needed an appointment to try the cakes, she said no. I get there on Saturday she says we need an appointment. So we ended up just getting a free cupcake. We spend the rest of the day driving around Fort Worth and went to Central Market and the mall (where we saw someone get caught shoplifting from an electronics store!). We went and looked at Kara's church(the picture on the left) as a possible ceremony location as well as a couple of other churches her friends had been married at before (image to the right) We also found a hotel in Cleburne that is really neat looking and has daily room rentals available for $200, which is amazing because most places only rent out by the 1/2 day or by 4-6 hours and its reaching $800-$1,000. (image directly below) This was relief and it is nice looking. Most places that are that cheap are pretty ugly looking honestly. Mark has a personal assistant/secretary that is really good at coordinating and decorating stuff like this so she is going to help me when she isn't busy with Mark's stuff! Mark and Kara took us out to Ruth's Chris for dinner Saturday night. Then Sunday we drove about an hour an half maybe two hours to meet the lady at the ranch. We were all there waiting but she wasn't there so I called her and asked her where she was and said I was an hour late and she had just gotten home so we would have to reschedule for another time. I was pretty disappointed about that. But we did get a good feel for the place and peeked in through the windows and took pictures as well. I do feel that it is do-able and would be a beautiful place to have the reception outside by the pool and light up all the trees with Christmas lights and put floating candles in the pool. (image to the right and below) And the ceremony in the sunroom. (sunroom is the image or the left) After we looked around there we met a baker that runs her business out of her home in Carrollton with two two-layer 8" cakes (one was chocolate sour-cream with white mousse filling, the other was white chocolate with grand mariner filling). She was very nice and very cheap as well (only $2 a serving). We stopped at a Carls JR on the way home and tried them! They are very good. So right now I have it narrowed down to two venues. Either the ranch or the ceremony at Kara's church and the reception at Liberty Hotel in Cleburne. Below I will post the rest of the images of the ranch so you can get a better feel for what it looks like. You will see images of the entry way, the fire pit, the dining hall, the main view of the ranch itself, the kitchen

Square or Round

I think I have decided on the style of cake but should I get round or square? Be sure to vote at the right!

Help!!!

Can yall continue to help me look for venues in the DFW area? David and I are going to Karas after I get off work Friday to look at that ranch but in case I don't like it I want a few other places to look at as well. You can go to theknot.com and search for venues by locations and price. I might also look at a couple photographers or bakeries (and try out the cake flavors!) So you can help me search for those too if you would like!!! Just remember...cheap...pretty...andallows outside catering! We do have a pretty good idea of a guest list. I have chosen the flowers for the bouquets- calla lillies! ( mine be white brides maids be pink- maid of honor be pink and white).

Resgistry

I know it is a bit of a head start but for registering at places but we have registered at Williams Sonoma.

We have a date!!!!

The official date is either March 12 or 19 (depending on Spring Break) 2011!!!!

We're Engaged

As most of you know by now, David and I are engaged (Jan 3 at 3am!). He wrote "Marry Me Kala" in the snow and took me outside with my eyes covered and when I opened them he was down on one knee! As of right now the plan is to get married next spring (possibly Spring Break). I went to TX a couple days later to begin looking at wedding venues. It was quite dissapointing to find out how expensive most venues are! The venue that I really liked started at $10,000! I later found a venue that was just $800 (The Ashton Hotel). I went and looked at it, loved it but when the lady sent us an email with a price quote after all the hidden fees it ended up being $2,800. Mom called and told them that they could remove the hidden fees and we'd think about but there was no way it was going to happen at $3,000. They were going to charge $75 alone just to cut our wedding cake! We decided that if they lied to us up front we didn't really want to deal with them for a long run. So as of right now we are looking at a house to rent for a couple nights that is about 30 miles north of Dallas on a ranch.http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p144889#photos-bar (that is a link to the house). We have our wedding party chosen. My bridesmaids will be Allyson, Lillie, and Kara and my maid of honor will be Asa. Davids groomsmen will be Brett, Jourdan and his former roommate Michael and best man will be Ray. I have chosen the colors to be black, white and bright pink. Asa has made me a wonderfully organized binder that has all the cut outs from magazines that I like and she has arranged them by the ceremony, reception with subdivision that include cake, reception decor, etc!She has done such an awesome job! We are still working on a guest list and all the other details. I know I like calla lilies so they will probably be used somehow. I will keep updates of how the wedding planning is going posted on this blog if you are interested and feel free to jump in and give me ideas and send me links!