everybody's workin' for THIS weekend!

Well, the ball keeps rolling. I've gotten almost everything on my ta-da to-do list finished... and with no surprise, there's still more to do! It's pretty great though. I feel like the end of all the planning is almost here and soon it'll just be time to relax and enjoy the wedding! If there's any advice I have to give about the final week of wedding planning, I'd say get it all done by two days before the wedding at the latest, if you can. I've been working my tail off these past two weeks, but the pay off is that the two days leading up to the wedding, I can be a calm-as-a-cucumber, to-do list free bride. So here's what I've gotten done in the past week:


Perfect programs for the ceremony
My brother Matt took over on this project and they look great! They still need to be printed, but they're basically done.


Design and print signs for the reception hall
These are all set! Matt designed these as well. He used the fonts the we used on the invites and save-the-dates so all the printed things sort of go together. I'm not going to show pictures of any of these now though... I want them to be a surprise to all the guests.

Design and print inserts for the luggage tag favors
Matt designed these as well (seriously, he's awesome) and FedEx Office took care of the printing today. I tried Staples first but they were going to be a bit more expensive. Lesson learned, if you have printing needs, choose FedEx Office. Other lesson learned: FedEx Office = Kinkos. Kinkos doesn't exist anymore. That was confusing for a little while. 


Make the tack-the-map board
My dad helped me put this together tonight. We decided not to use a map of the whole world because all our RI guests wouldn't have had room to fit their tacks on the map (insert RI-is-super-tiny joke here)! Plus, we don't have anyone coming from out of the US. Problem solved! So, we ended up finding a great vintage map of the US at Staples the other day that we glued down to the cork board tonight. We had to glue blue ribbon borders around the map since it didn't quite fit on the large cork board we had. Oh well! It actually looks really neat. Can't wait to have our guests tack their locations on to the map! It'll look even better. 

This was before we added any of the ribbon...
 a very early version of the tack-the-map project.

Meet with the DJ
I met with the DJ (my brother's friend Chris) about a week ago, the same night I worked with my brother Matt on all the printed stuff for the wedding. It seems like the night will flow smoothly! He knows all the songs I want to be played (which will be collected by my brother, loaded on to my computer, and played from my iTunes on the night of the wedding... saving money!), when to introduce things, who to introduce, etc., etc. I was a little nervous about music before I met with him, but I'm much more comfortable now. We still have a lot of music to find and load on to my computer, but this should come along over the next few days. 


Work on speech for rehearsal dinner
I let John take care of this and he did an AMAZING job on our speech, trying to convey our deepest gratitude for all the wonderful things our friends and family have done for us... not only to help in planning the wedding, but just overall throughout our lives. I'm so glad I let him take over on that. It should be very moving that evening :) 


Make bags for out-of-town guests
This wasn't on my original to-do list, but my mom had the idea to put together some bags for the out-of-towners staying at the Radisson. We found some of those reusable grocery bags and filled them with information about Newport, RI, directions to the church, water bottles, snacks, my dad's ideas for touring Newport, RI and my top 5 list of things to try in RI. I'm excited for our guests to see/use them!


Perfect the seating chart
This was one of my most challenging tasks in prepping for the wedding. It was just really difficult to get the right combinations of guests in the right numbers at the right tables. Then, after finally figuring it all out, I had to write it all out for the Radisson, which ended up being a stressful event in and of itself... because included with writing it all out, I had to list the food counts... chicken vs. beef vs. vegetarian vs. kiddie meals. The numbers kept turning out  wrong. We ended up with 130 guests, but the food wasn't adding up! It took me a little while of counting and re-counting and re-re-counting, but eventually I figured it out. All's good in the hood now! My suggestion though... don't offer more than one meal option. It'll make the seating and organizing WAY earlier. Just my two cents!


While I'm here in RI working on all this wedding stuff, John is still back in Houston putting our apartment together! He is about 96% moved out of his apartment as I type this and has been working on moving all his stuff over for about two weeks now. I felt bad leaving him behind to put our new place together, but he's doing such a great job! It's so exciting to talk about "our" apartment! I'm not used to saying that. Can't wait to be his official roomie!


And even more exciting is that I get to see him again in about 48 hours. He arrives in RI on Wednesday late into the evening. Before he arrives, we'll be having dinner with his parents and siblings (because they fly in before him!) at my parents' house on Wednesday night. Then, after that, just a few short days left til the wedding! I really can't believe this... it's almost here!!