One Year Anniversary

If you're reading this, we've jetted off for a romantic long weekend in Belize to celebrate our first wedding anniversary!  Here's a few memories from the happiest day of our lifes.  The best advice I can give brides to be is to plan a wedding that is going to be genuinely fun.  We had such a blast!

Thanks to all our friends and family for having the night of our lives with us and supporting us in our first year as Mr. and Mrs.

Need Advice

So I still haven't gotten my dress cleaned/preserved. Note, there was no major staining, but it still needs to have happened yesterday. Anyone have a good place I can go here in Austin?

Rehersal Dinner Pics

Darryl did a great job at planning our rehearsal dinner at Serrano's downtown. We rented out this adorable little building in the back, there were mariachis, great food, and great times with our friends and family.

My Aunt Jean and me.

Me and my Dad

PICTURRRRRRRES EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

That was me around 4 PM this afternoon at my desk at work. It was hard to maintain any professionalism as I furiously flipped through the photos (and she's still uploading so I have to wait until tomorrow to see the rest, I die). Some of them are so perfect, I love this shot of my dad and I looking at each other right as we get ready to walk down the aisle. I cannot describe how perfectly that photo captured that moment. So many adorable ones of our flower girls/nieces and our friends! I know I sound like an ass here, but I wish more friends would have bomb ass photogs at their events because our friends are going to be able to buy some amazing shots of themselves. Lucky us that Carli is shooting 2 more weddings (maybe 3) we will be attending in the future. Can't wait to share them with you!

More Wedding Photos

Okay, so I know the blog has kind of been lacking in content lately, but hopefully I'm making up for it with wedding photos? Darryl's family took 700 photos, plus stuff from friends who've been sending them to us and I am DYING to see Carli's pro photos. You reading this Carli? DYING.

Anywho, I give you more photos:

We are a relieved looking bunch...

Gratuitious Wedding Images

Getting ready!

I'm married!

Chatting with friends, love Mike and Marie's faces, bottom left

Antique Rolls Royce Sparkler Send Off

Back From the Honeymoon!

Kelly + Darryl from carli kiene {inkedfingers} on Vimeo.

I give you previews courtesy of our lovely photographer and my dear friend and bridesmaid The Waspy Redhead.

The difference between men and women and a tantastrophy

After months of budgeting, number crunching, menu tweaking on the wedding items I planned, Darryl and I are talking while driving this week and he says, "we're having 60 people at the rehearsal dinner" (yikes we only planned for 50). So I say, "well, how much is the RD costing us, the extra 10 people may be no problem" he responds "I don't know how much we're paying for it, do you?" Nope. I don't. Neither does he and he is paying for it. At this point, who cares.

In other news, I got my spray tan yesterday at 6:30 AM (why on earth tanning salons are open that early, I'll never know). In my early morning stupor, I managed to pull the shower cap down a little low on my forehead, which after the tan developed, made my forehead 2 different colors. I rushed back to the salon, there was some debate about if I should go back in the booth, but we decided that I would still have a 2 toned face, but just darker. Kind of reminded me of this episode of Friends.

They gave me a bottle of some stuff, dabbed it on, and all is saved. Close one. I'll catch you guys when we return from Jamaica!

No Turning Back Now...

The first wave of family arrives today, they are currently airborne, en route from Vermont. I completed the OOT bags last night, we got these super cute Texas flag bags and filled them with Austin beer (from Real Ale ), Longhorn candies from Lammes, a UT pen, a CD I burned of Austin-Texany music, a bookmark by a local artist, a super helpful information packet, and a Keep Austin Weird koozie. The kiddies got UT Longhorn bags with stuffed Bevos and Sweet Leaf lemonades. I'm dropping the bags off tonight when I meet the fam for pizza at Homeslice!

Confession Monday

We spend every night fumbling through the foxtrot, trying to get ready for our first dance, which we taught ourselves to do by watching YouTube instructional videos. Dancing with the stars, we are not. I've decided that Darryl will walk away angry because I will be laughing so hard and the rest of the guests will think we're just staggaring around drunk. Get ready for a show people and for the love of God, if anyone can teach us to do this blasted dance come over and teach us.

Missed Oportunity

Oh how I wish my wedding cake was a tiny replica of me in my dress, talk about a missed oportunity. I kid, I kid.....

Wedding Timeline Frustration

I have a question to pose to all you newlyweds out there, tell me if I'm crazy:

My ceremony (which is 6 days away) starts at 5 PM. My florist wants to setup at 3 PM. My caterer, who is bringing things like chairs for the ceremony and the reception, refuses to arrive earlier than 3 PM. I said, "okay, do you think you can have the chairs for the ceremony set up by 3:30, I can push back my florist." They said "no, our priority will be in setting up the reception hall, once that's done, we'll get to your chairs." Note that I am paying them extra to set up these effing chairs.

How does this make sense, we're going to need the chairs set up so we can have the ceremony? Therefore, we need them more urgently than the reception setup. The reception doesn't even start until like 6. I mean, these people are professionals so part of me wants to say, whatever, you do this for a living, I wash my hands of it. However, I'm pretty sure left to their own devices, will end up with my florist still decorating the chapel as people are arriving.

So now my poor wedding coordinator is left to set up 71 chairs by herself (because some will already be there at the site that are included in our venue rental), even though I'm paying someone else to do it. We thought about having the groomsmen do it but they don't need to get all gross and sweaty before the day even begins. My caterer didn't include gratuity in their bill, let's just say that this will be remembered come tipping time. Kind of furious with them over this, but I don't think a big showdown with them will help at this point, I think we all just need to find a way to solve the problem. Argh.

Bueller.................Bueller...............................Bueller

Will the party that gifted us with these fabulous luggage pieces from our registry (both in beautiful blue) please identify themselves? They came sans packing slip or card, so I have no idea who to thank. Anyone have this happen to them? How do I deal with this, because this certainly warrants a thank you card.

Wedding Checks and Confession Monday

Confession Monday

I once dated someone who played jazz flute...in public.

Wedding Checks

• Completed OOT guest bags
• Purchased dress and undergarments for Sandal's White Night
• Got pre-wedding dye job
• Had second dress fitting
• Paid balance to caterer, delivered final head count
• Picked up D's ring, it doesn't fit, am out of town on business until Thursday, oh shit. No idea what to do.

Add it to the list...

After reading Kate's blog A) I am very jealous of her trip to the Turks and Caicos. I tried to lobby to go there for our HM, but most of what I know about it is related to geology and carbonate rocks, not a compelling way to sell it to the FI, so to Jamaica we go. B) I need to do some serious shopping. I'm thinking the same 4 tired Target dresses that I've been sporting for the last 3 years could be refreshed...

Caterer Bill

I was looking over my catering bill today and noticed it was a lot higher than I was expecting. This is because I had to rent 130 chairs for our outdoor ceremony. If we have it in my dream chapel, then between rental and setup fees, I can cut like $700 out of my budget. Argh. We now have 119 guests (but one of those is a little toddler and can sit on a lap) and I anticipate 5 more to respond putting us at 124 not counting D and myself. If it's wrong to do a fist pump in the air in celebration of someone sending their regrets, then I don't want to be right.

In other news, I put on my Seven for All Mankind jeans that I bought when I was 21 years old. They slid on pretty easily and are 100 percent cotton (no spandex to cheat ladies). Granted, when I bought them they were a bit big on me and they are pretty snug through the thigh, but I'll still consider it a victory. The only complaint? Apparently when I was 21 I liked REALLY low rise jeans. Crack much?

Confession Monday

We have 111 people confirmed to attend our wedding. The chapel holds 125. Counting Darryl and myself, 12 more people can RSVP that they are coming so that we will all fit. The 13th person that RSVPs is pretty much going to be on my shit list for all of eternity because A) they RSVPed late and B) they forced me to move my wedding out of the chapel of my dreams to the outdoor location. In fact, I would prefer that no one else RSVP, let's just cut it off, game over. Unfortunately, a lot of these people are Darryl's friends and we won't be doing that to him. However, he has a lot of phone calls to make this week. I do wish we could make the late responders stand up in the back or watch through the window. People could get chapel seating based on the promptness of their response, oh how I wish.

The Devil is in the Details

Unfortunately for me, I am very detail oriented, which is making this last month of wedding preparation excruciating. Things that never occurred to me are suddenly popping into my brain. My life consists of 3 things, work, weight watchers/the gym, and the wedding. I feel like it's ALL I do and all 3 areas are incredibly time consuming and demanding.

Anyways, enough bitching and moaning, here's what I accomplished this weekend:

• My jewelry came in, hooray!
• I updated the registry
• I made my photo contribution to the slide show
• I ran ALL over to get votive holders and pink votives for the reception tables, who knew pink would be so hard to find?
• I ordered paper lanterns to decorate the veranda
• I bought wrapping paper and gift bags for attendant gifts
• I helped my mom plan out the gift bags
• I updated the RSVP list
• I helped my mom pick out her wedding outfit
• I wrote 4 detailed pages for our out of town guests of anything and everything you can do in Austin
• I helped D with the programs
• I bought some other random other decorations for the reception
• I went through the budget in detail with my mother
• I discussed, ad nauseum, everything that was going to happen the wedding weekend from sending the dog to the kennel, to dropping off the gift bags, to the grand departure
• My dad and I picked our dance song

We are now down to the piddly small stuff. I think I'm all tapped out, it's a bad sign when you are looking forward to Monday to escape the weekend...

I Heart My Friends

Do you think this E-card will be too harsh to send out come Monday when the RSVP deadline has passed? I went through the list, we're actually making great progress. 36 invitations are outstanding. Of that 36, imaginine for a second that we get no more RSVPs between now and Monday, I can count the number of my friends who haven't RSVPed on one hand. Why am I gloating? Well the family that has not responded will become my parents' issue to deal with, which means I will have to shake down a measly 5 people or less for replies. I haven't looked at D's workload, but I think he's going to be kinda busy next week. And I will not be...with that at least.

Confession Monday

My pretty little wedding invitations should have arrived at all their final destinations by now and we are only 5 little days away from the RSVP deadline. Although the deadline is eminent, inexplicably I've only gotten responses on 50% of the invites. Most of the lagging parties are our friends who live here in town. I'm not going to panic yet, but my confession this Monday is that a rant about people who don't RSVP is slowly boiling in my blood and will probably be unleashed around this time next week once that deadline has lapsed.

Anyways, back to folding laundry and fretting about the ceremony song choices, part of me couldn't be happier about them, the other part thinks they're dreadfully cheesy....argh.

In other news, I'm down 12 lbs. Three more to goal weight!