11 days until the wedding!!!

Just wanted everyone to be reminded :)

The best of Brad and Lauren.

The movie trailer for my wedding.

Brad and Lauren

Admit it, we're cute!

A walk through the past.

Today we celebrated Grandma Oropeza's 85th birthday. My parents and I took Grandma Becky out to eat and my mom started asking her about her wedding. [Clearly, because what else would we talk about these days? Wedding talk is all we know].

I felt like I was in When Harry Met Sally. You know the part where the old couples talk about how they met. I wish I had had a camera, because that is what it was like. Grandma was so funny. She said that she saw my Grandfather at a church bazaar and he got in an argument with his girlfriend. So, Grandma went up to him and started talking to him. Way to go, grandma! 8 years later, they were married. And the wedding was a whole different story...

Getting married back then was a lot of work. They had the ceremony at 7 am at the church! That's right 7 am! Grandma said it was the only time they could do it at. Then they had to go back and make the food. They got real chickens from Sugarland (because that's where the good chickens were from) , they boiled them, and took the feathers off. Just so they could eat them. I'm so glad we don't have to boil chickens for my wedding. :) They had the reception at the house, so they had cleaned out the house and moved out all the furniture, and the night before the wedding there was no where to sleep. Grandma slept in a chair. She was so cute talking about her wedding story. It will be so fun when Brad and I are 80 and get to share our wedding story with our grandkids:)

The first of many....

Its 1:15 am and I'm supposed to be working on our invitations, which I am a little, but I'm getting tired. And I have a training at 8 tomorrow so its not really great that I'm up this late. But I wanted to share with the 2 people that read my blog that my Bradley and I got our first wedding gift today!!!! It was actually incredibly exciting for me. It was a griddle! Is everyone this excited about their first gift? There is photographic documentation :) It just made everything feel so real. As if buying a bedroom set and choosing a place to live wasn't real, but the gift made it seem very real. It's coming up. About 2 months!! sooo close!!! I can't believe its so close. Anyway, back to invitations and Happy griddle day!

Today was my dad's birthday too. happy birthday to him!!

5 ways you know you're planning a wedding.....

[as if I needed a reminder]

1. when you can't just say the weather, you can only give the weather in relation to it being a wedding day. For example: "Man, this would be a beautiful day for a wedding." or "I'm so glad my wedding day isn't today."

2. when your mom knows every bridal dress designer ever. She can just look at a dress and say that is such and such designer. It's really a talent that she needs to market.

3. when you know all these random Friday and Saturday dates throughout the next year. This year, Sept 11 falls on a Friday and October 31 falls on a saturday. Who would get married on Halloween?

4. when you can't work at all. I used to consider myself highly productive, now I spend more time surfing the web for wedding ideas than I do actually working.

5. when your dad mentions that he was on theknot.com the other day. true story.

From daily planner to legal notepad

Throughout high school, college, and until last week, I have always used a small planner. You can see the whole week at a glance and each day had about 10 lines. It wasn't tons of room, but it worked. It got me through high school college, and teaching. I carried it everywhere. It even fits in my new cute coach purse. I take it eveywhere. I have to know my schedule and it just worked. But recently, it hasn't been enough room. I was running out of room in my planner! This has never happened to me. I didn't know what to do, so I started adding sticky notes to my planner, which sounds like it would be a good idea, but it really wasn't. There were sticky notes all over the week..."jaclyn's wedding gift" "grocery list" "packing list for Austin." It was actually a big mess. Just yesterday one of my students said "Ms. Oropeza, don't forget to turn in the cell phone." I was like what? He says "I found your sticky note. Don't forget. " They were everywhere, so I had to find an alternate way. And that is how I got to the legal pad....pages and pages of endless lines...Each day is a new page and each day I fill it up with lists and lists of things to do. I feel so accomplished when I cross something off.

I tell Brad that I run a business...well, really I co-run a major business with my mom. I call it the Oropeza-Snead wedding business :) If you've planned a wedding you know its no simple job. and the details are outrageous! I knew 3 flowers before I planned this wedding: roses, peonies, renunculus. Before brad, I only knew roses, and now I have all kinds of info in my head and on legal pads. Call caterer, cake person, musicians, etc...

so whats the big deal with the legal pad? You're probably saying "it's just a legal pad, lauren...stop killing trees." But for me it's symbolic. My life used to be enough to put on a small aggie planner, but now it's bigger...it's expanding... now i have more responsibility...

...and that is how I know I'm growing up....from daily planner to legal pad. In less than 5 months I will be a wife and who knows where i'll go after the legal pad, but I'm excited about what life will bring us.