HONEYMOOOOOON

We're headed to ARUBA!

After much deliberation and research, John and I have decided on our honeymoon destination. We'll be flying out of RI at 8am the day after the wedding... Aruba bound!

We've known for a while now that we wanted to go somewhere in the Caribbean. Our top priorities in choosing destination were beautiful beaches, yummy food, relaxation, and fancy hotel room. We figured it was highly likely that anywhere in the Caribbean would fit the bill, so we started researching all the different islands... did you know there are around 7,000 in the Caribbean?! Obviously most of them you wouldn't go to for a honeymoon, but the point is, we had a lot to choose from!

For a while we were thinking about going to St. Maarten/St. Martin (a half French, half Dutch island in the Caribbean). We liked that there would be two different cultures meshed into one big, beautiful island, but research kept pointing us to Aruba. Every review we read and every bit of research surrounding weather/hurricane seasons were telling us Aruba was the best choice (did you know Aruba is outside of the hurricane belt? Major plus! Especially since most of the islands' hurricane seasons involve the month of July).

So, we caved :) and we decided on Aruba. Then, we started looking at all the different hotels, resorts, high rises, etc. We looked at the Radisson, the Marriott, the resorts that friends have stayed at, we debated all inclusive vs. not all inclusive, we looked at maps of Aruba and reviews of restaurants in the areas of the different places of stay. In the end, we kept coming back to Bucuti (much like we had returned to Aruba over and over). Everyone RAVED about it in every review we read, and it's one of tripadvisor's top 10 romantic spots in the world. Also, they cater to honeymooners and couples, and no kids are allowed (love kiddos, but maybe not on the honeymoon). So, how could we say no? Even the price was right!

Therefore, tonight, we buckled down and booked both our flights AND the resort. We're so excited about our choice and CAN'T WAIT for July 17th. The only day we're more excited for is the one before it :)

Here are some fancy-shmancy pictures of the resort:

The resort from the beach

Nighttime loungin'

Pool loungin'

The beach from the resort

These chairs are waiting for Mr. & Mrs. Schweitzer <3

Our room

Play-by-Play for the Big Day

My mother, the florist, and I met with the wedding coordinator at the Radisson yesterday. While there, we went through the entire wedding day, creating a minute-by-minute plan for the big day. It took a while to get all the information together, as we also discussed the meal, the centerpieces and seating cards, colors for linens, and other details related to vendors, but in the end we felt really accomplished and very organized for the wedding. 

Linda, the coordinator, noticed that one of the big things John and I want for the wedding day is a feeling of "fun" for everyone. First and foremost, we want to be married by the end of the day, but after that comes   an atmosphere of fun for all our guests. We really want it to be one heck-of-a-party that guests talk about for months to come! Therefore, she helped us to plan out the evening in a way such that guests will always have something to keep them entertained. Here's the general schedule for the evening (though I will keep in mind that the schedule can be fluid, because otherwise I might end up turning into a time-crunching Bridezilla!)

3:00 - 4:00:  Catholic Marriage Ceremony

4:00 - 4:30:  Receiving line 

4:30 - ?: Bridal party takes pictures

4:30 - 5:30: Guests make their way over to the Radisson

5:30 - 6:30:   Cocktail Hour at the Radisson

6:30:  Main ballroom is opened and bridal party arrives

6:50: Bridal party is announced

         First dance for Bride & Groom :)

         Blessing by Priest

         Champagne toast by Father of the Bride

7:00: 1st course is served

        Father/bride dance

        2nd course is served

        Mother/groom dance

        3rd/main corse is served

        Bride & Groom cut the cake

9:15: Best Man & Maid of Honor speeches

         Dessert is served

9:30: Dance party begins! 

         Tons of dancing

         Dollar dance

         Tons of dancing

         Toss the bouquet

         Tons of dancing

         Toss the garter

         Tons of dancing

11:45: Farewell to Bride & Groom

11:55: The last dance         

12:00: Party ends!

Whew!

Well, there it is. I'm sure there will be about 25 adjustments before the big day and about 50 on the day of, but it looks pretty good to me for now. 

Some other fun details we decided on: there will be a slideshow running of pictures of John and I (baby pictures all the way up through our relationship) during the meal for guests to enjoy and a photo booth run by my brother during the dance party. We're also going to have TWO desserts! Mmmm. Oh, I should probably fill you in on the delicious meal we have planned. 

Passed Hors D'Oeuvres (during Cocktail Hour):

Spanakopita

Sweet potato and coconut chicken mini fajitas

Grilled vegetable bruschetta 

Scallops wrapped in bacon

Chicken satay tandoori

1st Course: Minestrone

2nd Course: Mixed green salad with assorted dressings

3rd/Main Course: Grilled chicken breast with tomato cilantro sauce OR

grilled sirloin with spinach, red peppers, and portabellas (plus a veggie option for vegetarians)
Served with oven roasted potatoes and green beans with roasted red peppers

Dessert: Wedding cake (flavors tbd) AND 

a chocolate truffle pyramid with raspberry filling (OMGoodness to DIE for!)    

That's basically all the planning we accomplished with Linda. Today we worked on some more details, including plans for flowers and centerpieces. Expect to hear about those in my next post. Until then, I leave you with some pictures of the inside of the Radisson ballroom.

That upper right corner will the where the head table and dance floor are located.

These are the chandeliers in the room. Perfectly vintage, right? 

This is the view of the room from the head table. In this space will
be our 21 guest tables, photo booth, gift table, bars, and slide show projector.

Bridal Showers bring July Weddings

My mom and sister surprised me with a bridal shower yesterday! 


I arrived in RI on Saturday, planning on spending a week wedding planning during my school's spring break. I was already aware that the bridal shower would be happing this week, because it's the last time I'm going to be in RI before the schwedding, but as far as when the shower would be happening this week, I had no idea. 


As my parents pulled into their driveway, I noticed a blue Honda from ME parked in front of the house... and instantly knew Emily was here! I was so excited, I hardly let the car come to a complete stop before jumping out to see her. I ran into the house, gave her big hugs, and started getting more excited about the shower. If Emmy (bridesmaid) was in town to visit, I knew the shower was probably going to be the next day.


Well, the next morning, my mom told me to put on the nice dress that I packed, and two more of my bridesmaids showed up... first Justine, then Kate. I was so excited to have some of my girls together! And I definitely knew what was going on. We left the house and Kate blindfolded me in the car! She and my mom figured there had to be some sort of surprise to the day (since I already knew the shower was happening). But their plan was foiled by my great sense of direction! Even with Kate driving around in a circle at one point, I knew exactly where we were the whole car ride. 


When they took the blindfold off, I was standing in the Remington House Inn, in front of all my loving female friends and family. After walking around the room to hug everyone, Lauren gave a wonderful mimosa toast (I teared up a little bit!) and the eating began! Then, gifts! Then, cake!


All in all, it was a lovely afternoon. It was so great to be surrounded by family and friends, who were so excited for me and more than generous with their gifts. And to have almost all my bridesmaids (missed you Kathleen!) in the same place for the first time, now I'm even more excited for the wedding!


Here are some of my favorite pictures from the bridal shower...

They blindfolded me!

Ready to remove the blindfold

My cousins and aunts waiting to say SURPRISE!

SURPRISE!

Lauren giving her toast

Trying to be cute

A fake gift! My Aunt and cousin sent me these plates from
Crate & Barrel in the mail (to help me avoid shipping costs).
In order that I had a gift to open from them at the shower,
they printed the pattern of the plates and pasted it onto paper
plates. It was so confused, then greatly impressed by creativity :)

My bridesmaids told me each ribbon I broke represented a
baby for John and me. We're making silly faces because I
thought I had just broken a ribbon!

Bride robe :)

Trying on my new lingerie 

Matt, my photographer and brother

Memere (my grandmother) and Lauren (sister and MOH)

Justine and Emily - bridesmaids extraordinaire :)

The bride &  bridesmaids :)

Thanks to Lau and Mom for a great shower! <3

Blog Award!

About a week ago, Cathy over at fiscally chic gave me the "7 Facts Blog Award." (thanky!) As a result of receiving the award, I'm supposed to list 7 random facts about myself here on my lovely schwedding blog. Well, obviously I have some blogging inspiration right now, so let's just keep the ball rolling and get this going...

1.) That's little me! Fact #1 is that I'm a natural red head. I've been a ginger since the day I was born. And not once have I ever dyed it... not even with cute blonde highlights for the sun-bleached summer fun look. (please excuse the awkwardness of the above photo... I can't figure out how to get the copied image of the image in the upper left hand corner to disappear!)

2.) My favorite food is pickles! Plain pickles, fried pickles, spicy wickles, pickles wrapped in cheese, pickles dipped in honey mustard. If it's got tangy, salty pickles involved, I'll eat it! Well, unless they're bread and butter. I don't know what my issue is, but I can't handle them. Anyway, here's a picture of me and Emily (one of my bmaids) sharing a giant pickle at her rehearsal dinner. She gave it to me as a bridesmaid present that evening and I couldn't hold off eating it for even 10 minutes.

3.) I lived in Rhode Island for my first 21 years. It's the best little state there is and I miss it more each day I'm away from it. So happy to be getting married there. And here's a picture of me in Newport, RI back in 2008 (my last year as a RI resident).

4.) Music is a pretty big deal in my life. I played piano for 9 years, sung for 10 years (I was the #1 alto singer in the state of RI in 8th grade... pretty big deal, right?), and taught myself how to play the ukulele. I'm not a superstar at piano, voice, or uke, but I have fun pretending. That's a pic of me hitting the high note at the end of "God Bless America" at my college graduation. Just me, the band, and 20,000 people in the audience. No big :)

5.) Teaching is what I do best. Or it's what I try to do well, anyway. I taught science for one year in St. Louis and am on my second year of teaching math down here in Houston, TX. Algebra I is my forte. I also dabble in Geometry and Algebra II.

6.) I LOVE a good bargain. Seriously. If I get something discounted or for cheap, I can't help but walk around the rest of the day and tell everyone what a great deal I got on whatever it was. Or when someone compliments something I'm wearing that I got on sale, I immediately tell them how cheap it was. Example: the green sunglasses you see in the above picture... $3 at Target. So maybe this is why I'm (somewhat) enjoying the challenges of being a frugal bride?

7.) If you haven't figured it out already, we're getting married on July 16, 2011! I can't wait to marry my best friend, my adventure buddy, my sweetest love, and the best man I've ever known. You get a treat with this fact... introducing our official schwedding website: www.weddingwire.com/johnandsteph


Well that was fun! I hope you learned something new and/or interesting about me. And now, to pass on the "7 Facts Blog Award" to some of my favorite blogs. Happy fact-telling, ladies!

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C

Tack-the-Map Guest Book

I mentioned this guest book idea in an earlier post. Instead of signing a tradition guest book, guests will instead place a pin in a map to indicate where they travelled from or (going along with our adventure theme) "where their adventures began."

Well, as I was perusing one of my favorite wedding blogs (weddingchicks.com), I came across the exact idea, played out at a couple's wedding. This will be helpful for us when we design ours. Cute, right?

(photo by visionari)

Bridal Belt & Bmaid Dresses

I purchased a belt for my gown on etsy.com (from user Daniel12). I haven't had the chance to try it on with my gown yet, but I have the feeling that it's going to work out just fine. 


And here it is:

Also, we officially have a pregnant bridesmaid (congrats to Em and Bubs). Don't worry... I put my superior internet search skills into attack mode and found a maternity bmaid dress almost identical to the one the other bmaids will be wearing within 5 minutes. Check it out:

  
I think they're pretty darn close to each other. Obvi the maternity dress will also be navy (and not Easter-Sunday pink). Em is going to get it hemmed to the length of the original dress a few weeks before the wedding. It's going to work perfectly and look great. Go me! 

The Groom's Suit

Here it is, folks. John has picked out and purchased his suit (and green tie). I thought I'd post a pic for your viewing pleasure.

Isn't he just the most handsome groom-to-be around? Love him!

wedding workouts

This bride is busting her butt to get into bridal (and honeymoon) shape!

I joined the Y about a month ago and coworker/friend Veronica has been my workout buddy ever since. We take Zumba, Step & Sculpt, Spinning, and BodyPump classes together! Last night was BodyPump and my body is so sore! 

I've also started tracking my calories on loseit.com. It is awesome. Well, the grumblies in my tummy aren't always awesome, but the way the websites works is pretty great. You input your current weight and your weight loss goal, and it spits back the amount of time it'll take to reach it (for me, at the pace of 1 lb per week). Each day, you log the food you eat and it calculates your calories for you. And when you exercise, you get to each extra cals! Mmmmm. There's also some peer pressure involved. You can find your buddies on there and see their daily calories and workout summaries! So far I have friended 4 buddies on there, and we keep track of each others' gains/losses while gently encouraging each other to keep with it. 

This might all sound a little conceded, but I feel like many marriage prep regimes involve the bride and groom making their efforts to look their best on the big day. Don't get me wrong... I love John just the way he is and I know he feels the same about me. Heck, we could each gain 100 pounds and still be happily married come July. Honestly, it just feels good to push myself to be more healthy. Right now I have the wedding motivating me and hopefully this motivation will turn into a lasting habit. That way, John and I have as many years with each other as possible (as we'll be avoiding many health complications).


Anyway, to stay motivated now (and to push through the tummy grumbles and sore muscles), I need your help! Find me on loseit.com and friend me. Or let me be talk about being a health nut for a while. Congratulate me when I lose a pound. Tell me I look saucy, sassy, and bride-iful on my wedding day :) And I'll make sure to thank you for the support.