Progress thus far...

Things have been moving forward these last few weeks, Jeff and I have ordered our outfits for the wedding and our wedding bands. The wedding bands shipped out on Friday the 13th [fitting ;) ] and we got them last week. For the unveiling we went to our favorite cemetery after eating at our restaurant, Mama Mias, and to the spot where Jeff proposed. It was a pretty magical evening the way the sky turned a stunning shade of orange, purple, pink and dark blue at almost the very moment we tried them on for the first time.
My dress should arrive within the first week of October, and I can’t tell you how excited I am to see it in person! I think it’s a stunning dress and it’s hard to decide how I want to accessorize with it because I would hate to do to much to take away from the dress itself. Since we are getting married on our beloved holiday, Halloween, I feel I should play with that a bit, maybe some Halloween tights or a few bats on my jewelry or in my hair? I have not decided completely yet on what I am going to do, but I do feel that pearls would work with my dress and I am seriously considering wearing my grandmothers pearl necklace, who sadly has passed and will not be in the audience like I so had hopped she would be.
As things come together, I feel a odd mixture of stress and relief. We have completed our design of the invites and just need to start making them and sending them out which we hope to start next week. I am very excited to get them done and mail them, it is the one thing that keeps in the back of my mind all day.
So what is left? I need to come up with an idea of how to decorate the tables and some areas around the theater. This theater stands alone as a simply breathtaking backdrop and has a lot of atmosphere, so again, I am trying to tie the Halloween elements into the wedding degore, but I don’t want to do to much that it would distract you from the theater. We plan to use a lot of candles and of course there will pumpkins, that much I am sure of! I am sure there is plenty more to plan, but for now this is the main focus. I am also trying to complete our guest photo book, mostly while I am work so I can still enjoy the evening free of wedding stuff, and Jeff has started to create our film as well as some added ones that we plan to play throughout the night.
Overall, things are getting done and we look forward to the wedding more and more each day as we discuss ideas and plan what we will do! Things are starting to get very exciting!

Aloha Maui!

I am SO excited right now! Jeff & I have booked our Honeymoon at the Hotel Wailea, [http://www.hotelwailea.com/] a STUNNING and very romantic luxury hotel on the west side of Maui. We have both been doing a lot of research on what the island has to offer and have a pretty epic trip planned already.
We are very excited to go to Haleakala National Park and hike up to the volcano's crater to see the milky way and sunrise! We plan to drive along one of the most beautiful roads in the world to Hana, which has several beaches and waterfalls along the way, and of course this will be in our Mustang convertible that Jeff specifically has requested! ;p We hope to go Whale watching [if it is the right season for that] and of course scuba diving as well so that I can swim with the manta rays! :)
We may have a lot of adventure's planned, but we still also plan for plenty of R&R and relaxing days at the Spa that our hotel is famous for!

I feel truly blessed to have such an amazing man that loves me so much and treats me so wonderfully. It honestly brings tears to my eyes. We have been together for a long time and have walked through many twists and turns in our relationship, but we have always had this amazing bond, and undying love and respect for one another. We are the greatest of friends and I honestly believe from the bottom of my heart, true soulmates.

As the months go by and we plan for more and more, I realize everyday that this is the guy who I will be with for always and there is no greater feeling than that for me. We plan to celebrate our love this fall in all the ways we can, a wedding and honeymoon is not cheap... but it really is not about the expenses, but how we will enjoy it together as a couple. Hell, we could not have a honeymoon at all and get married by Elvis in Las Vegas and I would be okay with it as long as we were together, but the fact that we have saved EVERYTHING possible to celebrate our relationship over all these years just shows how devoted we are to one another and it gives me such an amazing feeling to know I have that kind of love and devotion from him and he has it for me as well. <3

Memories

Jeffery and I went to visit the theater today and get a better idea of how things will work out come this Halloween for our wedding! It sounds like Jeff Bass, the owner, is going to be doing some work on it this summer which will help when we get in to clean and set up; as well as having a volunteer day in May to do some cleaning that we plan to attend. He also gave us a lot of impressive information about the theater and it's history, like how the Kenosha theater was the second theater to play a film with audio and it created quite a buzz. Recently, he was excited to find many fantastic photo's that Life Magazine did back in 1938 when that picture played. Here is a link:
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=Kenosha+theatre+source%3Alife&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&start=0

All in all, it was a great meeting and it was wonderful to see the theater and it's beauty that even in it's condition you can still find plenty off. It hold's a strong atmosphere and it is very exciting for us that we will be creating another memory within it's walls that has held so many for many years. :)

Kenosha Theater webpage: http://www.kenoshatheatre.org/history.htm

Progress

Things are starting to move forward in our wedding planning adventures! We have selected wonderful wedding photographer's who we met with yesterday over at Moe's Irish pub. Simon & Jake of Valo Photography [ http://www.valophotography.com/ ] does some pretty AMAZING things with a camera and I can not wait to work with them on our engagement session and wedding! I have been following there blog's for a couple months now and I really respect them as artist's and the work they have done together. As a photographer, I knew I would be rather picky about this one key element of the planning, but I have to say that I feel very confident in our choice! I am sure they will do a GREAT job and bring a lot of fun to the event!

In just a little over a week we plan to meet with Jeff Bass who owns the theater we plan to marry in and take a look at it & discuss the details of the wedding. I have seen it once before when I did a photo shoot a couple years ago, but Jeffery has not, so this is going to be pretty exciting for him to gain a better understanding of how this will all be set up and play out.

Then there are the "Save The Date" cards that we plan to start working on this week which I am really excited about! I would like to get them out by the end of April at the latest, so we are currently coming up with ideas that will fit with our theme. Jeffery and I have got a few good ideas and concepts sketched out so it’s just a matter of selecting one and starting to design them! So far I think this has been my favorite thing to plan with him because we have been able to let our creativity out and bounce ideas off one another. It is always a lot of fun to collaborate and it’s extra special when you get to collaborate with someone you love!

All in all, I am very pleased so far with how this is all going and I know there is still plenty to do, but in all honesty, I don’t feel to stressed out about it. I am looking forward to ordering my dress next now that I have made it to my goal weight and feel confident in the size I will need to order. I look forward to booking our tickets to Hawaii and though I am NOT looking forward to the flight AT ALL, I know it will be magnificent and I am very excited to spend a week on the beach drinking Mia Thai’s, surfing in the crystal blue waters, walking on a volcano and scuba diving with sting rays! :D

There is a lot to look forward to and it's really starting to get me pumped for this summer/fall which is shaping up to be one of the GREATEST one's of all time!

Debauchery

We're excited to announce that we are planning a Bachelor/Bachelorette Party for this summer in the ultimate mischievous city of LAS VEGAS! :D

Most of you are probally well aware of the fact that Jeff and I have been going for YEARS to our favorite vacation city, Vegas, and in a way it has become a strong part of us and something we both LOVE! We're both REALLY excited to share the experiance with those closest to us this year for a 3 night stay starting June 28th- July 1st!
Jeff and I plan to stay at Caesars Palace [a personal favorite of ours] and hope you plan to stay there as well with us! We will be hitting up all our favorite nightclubs like LAX, Ghost Bar, Cat House and more and enjoying some great food, and entertainment! We already have some confirmed guests which we are REALLY happy about, but if anyone else wants to jump on board let us know ASAP and we can go over all the details with you! :)

VIVA LAS VEGAS BABY!!!

Sneak Peek...

Here is a little "teaser" image of my dress....

~Intro~

Jeffery and I have been engaged over a year now and that time seemed to go as quickly as the 9 years we have been together! We have been spending our time this last year doing all the things that we love and enjoy, not really focused on our plans for the wedding. This doesn’t mean that we haven’t been excited for the day we get to throw the biggest party of our lives together and in the company of everyone we love, but being together for as long as we have, it may not come as a surprise that we have shared many late night talks about what we envisioned our wedding would be like. It wasn’t going to be hard to think up some ideas, in a lot of ways we already had them, we just needed to discuss and figure out how to make them happen.
We both are very creative, and sentimental people. We share a lot in common, but also celebrate our differences. A lot of these qualities give me confidence that we will be able to put together an amazing wedding that no one will forget, but I know that our vision’s of what we might want may occasionally clash and that we will need to compromise some of our ideas. I am prepared for that, even though most people would expect the girl to do all the dirty work and freak out over little details. Not in this relationship, we both count a great deal on one another, and after all, this is OUR wedding, not MINE. We want this to be something we do TOGETHER and I couldn’t see it any other way in order for it turn out unforgettable.
It goes without saying that one of the things we share in common is our unbelievable love for Halloween. For many years we have always embraced this holiday by taking full advantage of everything Halloween! From our 8 year tradition of stealing and carving pumpkins, [nicknamed ourselves the “Pumpkin Thieves” and have even gone as far as wearing matching skull ski masks on our mischievous outings!] to Jeffery’s “Horrorfest” flyers he makes every year with a list of all the Haunted Houses we will be attending that year. We always spend the month of October indulging on our obsession. When deciding a date for our wedding, we both agreed that our passion for each other could only be matched to our passion for Halloween, so why not celebrate our love for one other on a day we have always loved as much as each other. Another element that added to our decision was the fact that we both agreed that weddings should still be fun even if it is a serious event! A “traditional white wedding,” as wonderful as they are, is not something that two imaginative people like ourselves have in mind, and it’s OUR big day, so we made the choice that we would put this wedding together ourselves to ensure the fact that it will be the unexpected and that we will totally enjoy it and have fun putting it all together!
I think when a couple has been together for some time like we have, putting together a wedding can be a fun project that will bring them closer together in a new way and allow them to show sides of themselves that have not yet been explored. Us working as a team on something such as this can really set the ground work for how the rest of our lives together will truly be. In stressful and challenging times, as wedding planning can be, its great to know that you have each other to count on for support and to make each other laugh. Jeffery can defiantly do just that, he is the CEO of support in this relationship and has a comedic charm that always wins me over no matter how lousy I feel.
So, where to begin? We started to pull out all the old ideas we discussed many night’s ago and worked off them. Amazingly not much has changed which made it very easy to set the mood of what we were planning our wedding to be, a classy Halloween theme with an awesome costume party to fallow! Jeffery went to work on planning his attire for that evening first and I was not surprised when he started to tell me his ideas. “A nice black suite from Express, [his favorite store] a blood red shirt and top hat- “I want to put something together that resembles the outfit Gary Oldman wears in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” he had told me. I LOVED the idea, minus the goofy glasses, and found myself a bit envious he had such a precise idea already.
I, unlike most traditional girls who have everything planned already when there 8 years old and have thousands of sketches of there future wedding gown, never really gave that any thought. The only thing I did know is I wanted it to be nontraditional and red. I once humored the idea of a black dress, but felt it was to cliché for an alternative girl to get married in black. Not to mention I wear black everyday of my life, so why would I want to wear a color so common to me on a once in a lifetime special day as this?! This called for a strong and passionate color such as red. I hate being the center of attention normally, but on a day such as this I felt a loud color such as red that would demand the attention of those around me was completely necessary. Besides it will match the stunning ruby in my engagement ring, and the color shirt my love had planned to marry me in. Being as sentimental as I am, I became attached to the idea and nothing could change my mind. With it decided I started hunting down the kind of dress that reflected my interests and personality and did not look like it was on the cover of Spring Bride. Not because I don’t like those kind of gowns, I do find them timeless and stunning on the right women, but anyone who knows me would agree it would not look right on me for a number of reasons. I also was considering the cost and thought that if I was about to drop a lot of money on something, I better be able to wear it more than once! After a year searching I finally came across a great website with many different options, which for a picky girl like myself, was a wonderful thing. After many late night games of “mix and match” I have chosen a elegant red gown and corset that I will play up with black satin opera gloves and a black faux fur stole. Since we plan to marry at the Kenosha Theater- an abandoned 1920’s theater that was commissioned by Carl Laemmle, who funded and helped produce some of the horror classics such as Bride Of Frankenstein- I felt inspired to add some 1920’s flair to my outfit. With this said, I am still looking for the perfect vintage black veil or mini top hat with veil.
With our outfit’s picked out we were ready to talk about catering. I find it funny, but no surprise that the two things we enjoy the most, shopping and food, were the first 2 things we started to plan. We both decided that Ma Ma Mia’s would be perfect. Who doesn’t love great Italian food, and it is the restaurant we have gone to on every special occasion in our relationship for many years. It’s “our” restaurant and we thought it would be pretty special to share that with those we love… and its SUCH GREAT food! So be prepared to indulge on amazing pizza, pasta and cheesy garlic bread! Also, what goes great with Italian food? Red wine, and since this is a Halloween themed wedding, we would only supply a great red wine that would go with that theme, Vampire Wine. *wink* For those of you who do not drink, we have a special non alcoholic treat for you… Specialty made Jones Soda in Orange and Cream! Both Jeff and I love to create art. His talent’s range from traditional painting and illustration to his recent work with special effects and sculpture. I like to do photography and play around a bit with mixed media. We decided to add a personal touch to one of our wedding favor’s for everyone by creating our own Jones Soda label! As for some of the other detailed party favors, you will have to just come and see what other goodies are in store!
With all this said, I am sure you have figured out by now that the reception is going to be a Halloween Costume Party, which means you MUST have a costume! We understand that not everyone enjoys wearing one, so a simple mask will be supplied for those who are not in costume or come unprepared. If you are uncomfortable wearing one the whole evening, it is okay to remove it, but we really want to see everyone in one when we do our toast's and appreciate your support on this! We also would love to see some photo's with everyone in costume as well during our "Photo Booth" sessions, so please have fun with it!
I hope this helped give you all a little insight into our ideas, hopes and plans for the wedding. We will be posting a lot of updates and info as the 10 months start to pass and you can always contact us on here or by phone if you have any questions. We created a Wedsite to help bring you all closer to the experience and to help inform you about whats to come so you can be better prepared. We love you all a great deal and have appreciated your support of us over the years. We love the idea of involving you in this once in a lifetime, special experience that we both are VERY excited for!!!

Jeffery & Crystal