4. Money dance

Have any of you heard of a money dance? It's a wedding tradition popular in Louisiana and in some cultures. Basically, the bride and groom go up on the dance floor, and men line up to dance with the bride while women line up to dance with the groom. Each person gets a few moments with the bride or groom and gives him or her some money, to wish the couple well and start off their marriage.

It's a nice way to get to spend some time with people during the reception, and I have been to weddings in Louisiana where they did this dance, but I'm really torn about it. My family hasn't ever heard of it, and I'm guessing they aren't the only ones. I don't want anyone to think we're being greedy by having a money dance, and I don't want anyone else to feel like we're bucking tradition by not having one.

Have you ever been to a wedding that had a money dance? What are your thoughts? I'd love some input on this one!

5. Winding down

I know we're getting close to the end, because my to-do list items are getting smaller and smaller. Huge items like "book the honeymoon" are gone, and replaced with littler things like "print out directions for the honeymoon."

In fact, we don't have any big things left except to meet with the DJ later this week to finalize the music. My list for today was "print directions to honeymoon place, buy mascara, and print pictures for parent gifts" and I'm almost done.

I intentionally left the first half of this week open so I wouldn't have much to do, and I could feel free to get all the little things done. I've even paid all of the bills we have due up until we return from the honeymoon! It's a great feeling.

6. A great wedding present.

My boss gave me the day off on Thursday because of the wedding! Thanks, boss!

That makes a week and a half off for wedding-related festivities and the honeymoon. I know I'm going to enjoy it!

7. The last stand

Or, my last big bash as a single lady! I actually don't have any pictures from the day at all, but to me that's okay because we were having too much fun to stop and document it.

I started the day at 9:30 at Gould's Spa, where my ladies had gotten me the bridal package! It included a massage, facial, body polish, lunch, and a mani/pedi. Awesome. I felt so wonderful when I left there. Then, we stopped by my sister's to spend time with her sweet baby, after which we met everyone for dinner at Macaroni Grill.

Dinner was sooo good. I had the grilled pork chops and mushroom risotto (I love risotto), and two peach bellinis. We finished it off with tiramisu, one of my favorite desserts! From there, we hit up Fox & Hound for drinks, including shots and a bottle of champagne compliments of my awesome friends. At the end of the night, we headed back to my house where I sat and hung out with a couple of my girls, talking and sharing stories. It was a great end to a fabulous night!

I can definitely say I'm ready to be married, but I hope I get many more wonderful nights with these girls, for sure!

8. Woo, party!

We finally got the liquor situation resolved. We are serving Cosmopolitans, as well as Jack Daniel's. So we'll have my favorite drink, and Cory's (Jack and Coke, actually). I'm really excited about this, because it saves us half the money we'd spend on an open bar, but we still got enough liquor for everyone who might not want beer or wine. I think it's going to be great.

We're working on the music for the ceremony/reception stuff, so hopefully I'll be able to write about that soon. Tomorrow is my Memphis bachelorette party. It should be an awesome weekend!

9. We're on the 10-day forecast!

It will be interesting to see if this holds up. I fully expect it to change a million times before the actual day.

10. Finished with the decorations!

We have everything ready to go to bring to the wedding! Guestbook, decorations to hang, and even a box for people to put cards in at the reception. It looks like a stack of presents, and it says "cards" with our monogram below it. It turned out really cute. Now, all we have left to do is get ready for the honeymoon, decide on the music, and get the liquor situation straightened out.

Here's our card box, which I think took less than ten dollars to make:

11. Informal poll

Trying to narrow down the liquor situation. Please comment if you can!

1. How long do you usually stay at a wedding reception (number of hours)?

2. How many drinks would you have while hanging out at a party for about four hours?

3. What are you most likely to drink: wine, beer, vodka, whiskey, none of the above, or a combination?

12. What's in a name?

I always knew that when I got married, I would change my name. People who know me pretty well know that I'm not close at all to my father (parents are divorced), and I just don't have much attachment to my last name. When I was little, I always wanted a normal last name (mine's a word, but not very common as a surname), and I figured being married would be my chance to have that.

Well, those of you that know Cory know his last name's not common at all! But, it's still a change, and I'm really looking forward to having that symbol of my new identity. A lot of women drop their middle names and add their new last name, so their name goes First Maiden Last, but I'm actually really attached to my middle name, so I'm keeping it.

We've gotten our first couple of cards addressed to us as a married couple, and it's pretty neat. I've tried to practice my new signature a couple of times, but it still feels too weird. I'm going to keep trying, though! It's much harder to get my hand to scrawl something different than to think of myself as a married woman. You write the same thing over and over for 26 years; it's the name I wrote when I learned how to write. I guess just like anything, it will get easier over time.

13. The Bochelor

Okay, so we're not talking about Conan O'Brien's The Bochelor. It's more like Bachelor Party. Cory went away this weekend for his bachelor party in Louisiana. Lucky guy gets two weekends in a row of bachelor parties!

Meanwhile, I spent the weekend hanging out with my girlfriends and doing housework. I got to see I Love You, Man (which was awesome), and attend a friend's shower and bachelorette party. It was kind of fun going through that with the new perspective of having just recently been to my own showers and bachelorette party. I will say that I have a new appreciation for RSVPs, and will always try to come to someone else's shower if I possibly can! It meant so much to me to see the people that made it to mine.

With less than two weeks to go, the next laid-back weekend I will probably have will be as a married woman. Here we go!

14. Two weeks

Two weeks.

Two weeks until I put on that white (well, ivory) dress.

Two weeks may be a long time if you're in The Money Pit, but for those of us not in Hollywood, it's not very long at all! It's amazing to me that when he first put that ring on my finger, it was 35 weeks before the wedding, which we hadn't even planned yet.

In 14 days I will marry a man who makes me laugh, challenges me intellectually, understands me, empathizes with me, and loves me, heart and soul, wrinkles and all. We will be our own new family, with our own identity. That part is worth so much more than all the flowers and food and music.

I can't wait.

15. Something...

Old, new, borrowed, blue, right? Technically, there's also supposed to be "a sixpence in your shoe," but I'll have enough shoe comfort problems that I'll probably avoid that.

I have had several people ask me if I'm going to do this ritual, and what I'll do for it, and the answers are "yes," and this:

Old: My freshwater pearl necklace my uncle gave to me for my 8th grade graduation.
New: My wedding dress! My mom got married in jeans, so that wasn't an option.
Borrowed: My mom's pearl earrings (because she has real ones, and I don't).
Blue: My garter has a tiny blue bow on the inside, meant as a "something blue."

It's a pretty neat feeling to know that I'm going to be a small part of an old tradition that many brides before me have done. A little bit of history carried with me for a little bit of luck.

16. With these rings...

... well, you know.

17. Final payment - done!

Well, we went down to the ballroom and made our final payment there. It's a great feeling to have almost everything paid off! The only major unpaid item on our list is just the DJ. Here are some of the details we finalized:

- We're going to have three kinds of wine and three kinds of beer. For the wine, merlot, chardonnay, and white zinfandel, and for beer, Budweiser, Bud Light, and Miller Lite. I think that should hit the perfect range of everyone's taste (at least of the people that I know have a preference!).
- We will have the cocktail area blocked off before the ceremony. Everyone will enter into the main ballroom for the wedding, then go to the lounge for cocktails while they change over the room (15 minutes, I think). Then the ballroom will be opened up and people can hit the buffet or the dance floor.
- Also, for you Memphis fans, if they are playing during the reception, there is a TV on the wall behind the bar, so we will ask them to put the game on. In return though, try not to check the score during the ceremony if you can help it - it's going to be short!
- There is free parking for ballroom guests. Either lot behind the building (or if you're in front of the building, they are behind or to the right) are free to use.
- The menu! We're having chicken tenders, mini hamburgers, Swedish meatballs, a fruit and cheese display, a veggie tray, crab stuffed and Italian spinach stuffed mushrooms, and assorted pastries (which we are told includes chocolate covered strawberries). And cake, of course!

We also finalized the layout of everything. I think it will be awesome! It's nice to have such a big piece of the puzzle in place.

18. Wedding brain

Scatterbrained.

That's the only word I can think of to describe how I've been feeling the past couple of days. I've been having trouble concentrating at work, and it seems like every hour or two I get interrupted by something for the wedding. Sometimes it's a phone call; sometimes it's an email or even just my thoughts. I have a mental checklist that grows and retracts as I suddenly remember something or forget something else.

We're 18 days away from the wedding. I'm trying to enjoy the time we have before the big day, but sometimes it's hard to stop and look at the big picture when all the details are screaming out at me.

19. Ceremonial stuff

We went back and forth about whether to have readings in our ceremony. We aren't regular churchgoers, and we don't have favorite romantic poems or anything like that. When it came down to it, we decided that the ceremony that would suit us best would be simple. So it will go something like this:

The preacher will welcome everyone and say a prayer. Then, we will exchange wedding vows, using the traditional words. We will give each other the rings that have waited patiently for the past few months, and then receive a blessing from the preacher. After that, we will turn and face the people we love, and be pronounced Mr. and Mrs.!

It's short and simple, and I love it.

20. Poofy balls

I've done a few things myself for the wedding, and my current DIY project is these tissue paper pom-poms from Martha Stewart.


The idea is to bring some color into the space and bring the eye upwards. I think they're turning out really cute! The only thing I'm worried about is bringing 30 of these guys up into the ballroom and not being able to hang them. Haha, oh well. I'm going to ask about that when we go to make our final payment.

Here's a picture of the ones I've done so far:


They're a pretty fun and inexpensive way to make cute decorations.

21. All the ladies in the house

I had the best bridal shower this weekend at my godmother Tanya's house. I arrived early with my three Memphis bridesmaids, Kim, Sarah, and Tammy. Kim ordered the prettiest cake - it was a spring green with white scrollwork; a vanilla cake with almond buttercream. It was delicious, but so was everything else! We had meatballs, taco dip, artichoke dip, herb cheese and crackers, chicken salad, and more.


We played some great games like bingo and had a purse scavenger hunt. We also played a game where everyone had to answer a quiz about Cory, and then everyone got to watch me answer the quiz in front of everyone. I got the best score out of the group, which is pretty appropriate. The unfortunate part is that for every question I got wrong, I had to stuff a marshmallow in my mouth. I could only keep a couple at a time without gagging, so I kept having to eat marshmallows to get more in there!


I got some wonderful gifts, too. Everyone was so sweet, and we got a lot of great serving pieces that I am really excited to get to use. Having showers sure has made me want to host a party of my own. Maybe when all this wedding hoopla calms down, we can have a really great one!

22. Cutting through the red tape

Or going along with it, anyway. Today we got our marriage license! It was a (not) fun-filled day that began with us waiting four hours at the DMV to get our new driver licenses with our current address on them, then off to the county clerk for the marriage license. The desk was surrounded with lace and tulle and pictures of married couples; it looked cheesy but cute. It only took about 15 minutes to get everything signed and printed out, and $97.50 and two signatures in a very large book later, we were on our way! The marriage license register book is actually pretty neat; you really feel like a part of history thinking about how many people have written in that book and all the others that preceded it. We even had to give them our parents' names and where they were born.

It's a great feeling to have this big step out of the way, because now, no matter what, we're getting married. Even if the flowers don't show or the food tastes horrible, at the end of the day, we will have done what we set out to do. Hopefully getting our license on Friday the 13th doesn't mean anything bad for the wedding!

23. TYVM

I am very proud to say that we are completely caught up on thank-yous from the shower in Baton Rouge a couple of weeks ago. Of course, we're probably about to have another round from the shower this weekend, but it's nice to feel caught up.

I've never been a big thank you note writer, mostly because I don't usually keep cards around, and I feel awkward because I never really wrote them growing up, either. I've kind of come around to thinking they're pretty cool, though. It's a neat feeling to see that someone liked your gift and acknowledged it with a traditional note in the mail. I have gotten some thank-yous from people whose baby showers I attended, and I really appreciated them. I bought some cards on clearance at Target that are super cute and match our wedding colors, so it's great that I didn't have to spend a lot, because obviously they didn't come with our invitation suite (because we didn't have one).

It does help that I actually have people's addresses now, because of all the wedding invitations. Planning a wedding does wonders for completing one's address book!