being a bride before being engaged and my inspiration

I was watching my usual Friday afternoon/evening show Say Yes to the Dress today. The episode I watched was an older episode...this was probably my 3rd time watching it. But let's not tell anyone that, ok? In this episode the "bride" was shopping for a dress before she even had an engagement ring! Even I think that is a little weird. However, I do have a confession to make...before Sean and I were engaged we (my mom, Ashley, and I) went to multiple bridal shows, of course watched Say Yes to the Dress (what girl doesn't?), purchased bridal magazines, and I had started looking at blogs. That's not as bad as buying a dress before the ring right?

LOVE Randy from the original Say Yes to the Dress season

The "new" season from Atlanta. They are sassy!

We started going to bridal shows/forums maybe 2 years ago. It was a good reason to eat really good cake, look at pretty dresses, and see gorgeous floral arrangements. When we went in the past Ashley would always pretend to be the bride. She would wear one of my mom's overly-large fake diamond rings and she would be the bride for the day. Everyone would come up to her and she would have to make up a groom's name, a wedding date, and such. It was really fun!

Other than the bridal shows that we went to my mom also bought a subscription to Bride's magazine about a year before anyone in our family was engaged. It has been quite fun going back and looking though all the magazines to get ideas. My mom has a large stash of all the old magazines with numerous tags, folded corners, and stuff ripped out.

Right when Sean and I started getting pretty serious and talked about being together long term (there wasn't an actual conversation about this. It was mutually amused. At least I thought so) I discovered the world of blogging. Mostly thank you to my then roommate, Jenni. She introduced me. I was instantly hooked, hence this blog :) I have gotten sooooo many ideas from blogs from dresses, invitation inspiration, flowers, and the list goes on....

By far MOST favorite wedding blog to follow is Style Me Pretty. They have pictures upon pictures that are categorized by color, or category, or tags. It's awesome!

Others I follow are The Bride Suite and Forget Me Knot Weddings.

Of course lately most of my wedding planning inspiration comes from Pinterest :) check out our link in the tabs above!

On another note. It doesn't have anything to do with our wedding, but I wanted to mention it because I love it. My other favorite blog is Young House Love. It is a young couple that is re-doing/DIYing/decorating their house. I want to be them! She also has Pinterest and I follow her :)

Monopoly is BACK!

This post is for Sean...

McDonald's has the Monopoly game going again! Truthfully, I could care less. I can't justify spending $7 on 4 game pieces that usually end up winning a small fry. But, Sean loves it so I guess I have to somewhat like it, too. Last night after the library we stopped and got some bad food there at McDonald's. We ended up with 6 game pieces, and what do you know! All we won was a medium fry...

Sean got a job!

This past Friday Sean signed his contract with HNI in Muscatine!

Here is the timeline:
May 2011: Sean graduated with a BBA in Management Information Systems.

June 2011: Sean worked/lived in Muscatine for HNI.

August 2011: He began his masters program through Upper Iowa University. He will finish in December of 2013.

September 23, 2011: He signed his contract! HNI must have liked him so much :)

As you can tell by the timeline, he is currently taking classes online and is starting a full time job. I thought I was busy...not anymore that I am no longer working :) But, he gets up for work at 5:30 in the morning, leaves for work, gets to work about 7:00, works, leaves work, gets home about 5:00 in the evening, we have dinner, he studies until around 8 or 9, we get to hang out for a little while, and then he goes to bed. Repeat x 4.

Another thing. Muscatine is about 45 to 50 minutes from our apartment. I hate commuting! I don't know how he does it! 

I am so proud of all of his accomplishments! He has worked hard (even almost got a 4.0 his last semester!) and now it has payed off!! Go Sean!

we love fall!

Because today is the first day of fall I thought I would do a special post about the new season we are beginning...

Fall is our favorite season! (Sean says it's tied with Christmas...I guess Christmas is a season?) Sean's favorite parts of fall are the weather, football, the leaves, and wearing jeans and sweatpants. I love the smells of fall like cinnamon, apple, spice, pumpkin, etc. I like the colors, the colder nights with the windows open, apple pie, and sweaters! What is better than relaxing at home in a nice warm sweater in the middle of fall? Also, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and that happens in the fall :)

We would probably be getting married in the fall if we weren't going to get married while I was still in school. I found this wedding that I absolutely love! In addition to it being a fall wedding, it is also in Chicago. Two thumbs up!!

I love the cranberries and the candles

our cake and the ugliest cake

This post is going to be about our cake...I noticed we haven't done a wedding planning post lately. Nothing has been planned recently, so I thought I'd talk about cake. For my mom and my sister, Ashley, it's probably the best part of weddings. Originally, we were contemplating between just having deserts (like my favorite strawberry shortcake) and a small cake just for us to cut. But, we ended up deciding on a cake.

Quick rewind: last summer we went to a bridal show in Des Moines. There were so many cake vendors I left with a sugar high. There were cakes that were dry, too sweet, too crumbly, etc. One booth we stopped at was Glorious Desserts. Her almond cake knocked my socks off! It was just perfect!

Anyways, we booked her right away. We know for sure one of the flavors is going to be almond, but we don't have any others decided as of yet.

Here are some pictures that I have collected of pretty cakes. The cake I would like to kind of replicate is in this bunch, but I'm not telling which one :)

I was kind of google searching song lyrics or quotes with the word cake in it trying to make a clever post title. Instead, this picture popped up under google images. SICK!!! It was made for an "ugliest cake" contest. The part that grosses me out the most is the "poop" that is hanging off the side on the right. haha!!

randomness

So I don't really have a lot to talk about. So I'm just going to mention a few random things that have been going on. Last night I finished up with my 2nd test of the week. I also had a quiz on Monday. Let's just say these last about 5 days have been rough! It didn't help that I had to work Friday-Sunday :( boo....BUT I put in my two week notice on Sunday! I only have 3 days of work left! Question: What are you going to do now? Answer: Well I'm going to study a lot more, enjoy my weekends, hopefully be able to go home more, and maybe find another job soon. I'm just going to enjoy a little bit of extra free time while it lasts :)

Last night I made our pokey sticks for dinner, did laundry, and cleaned while Sean did his homework. Once he was finished we watched the movie Bridesmaids. It's hilarious in case you haven't seen it! We definitely recommend it!

There is a little bit of another story about this movie. When it came out in theaters my mom, Ashley, Adam (Ashley's fiance), and I all went. My mom asked if Sean wanted to come....he asked what the movie was and then he decided he was busy. It's now kind of an inside joke; he just said it in such a slow and monotone way. It's pretty funny for all of us involved....Anyways, Sean decided he actually wanted to see it now that he heard all the reviews about how funny it is. He enjoyed it. And, for the rest of the night everything that came out of his mouth was a line from that movie. Is that just Sean or all guys?

Tuesday night the 3 of us (Ashley, Sean, and I) almost broke out into a dance party in our living room. Ashley and I were tired of studying and Sean was listening to music. Sean and I decided to show Ashley these dance moves what have recently learned about. 

WARNING...these dance moves might break out during our wedding. I have posted the videos here so you can practice before the big day. haha.

Here is what we like to call the "stanky legg":

And now we have the "bernie" (Sean's favorite):

Also, I found a video "How to: Dougie"

save the dates

Quick note: Today we are at the 10 month mark! It feels like a week ago I was writing our 1 year pre-versary post. The rest of the wedding planning experience is going to go by soooo fast!! I'm going to try and enjoy it!

Alrighty, back to the original purpose for this post...I ordered our save the dates yesterday. I'm really happy with how they turned out!! I designed them myself...well with inspiration of another one I saw. I'm not going to show the real one. I want it to be a surprise in the mail :)

here are some inspiration ideas and ones that I have collected that I really liked:

This one is just a draft of one I was working on:

weekend wedding stuff

Friday night we met with our florist/decorator Missy. She can kind of say what I'm thinking before I even know how to describe it. She's awesome! I feel really good about the direction we are going!

On Sunday my mom, Diane, Jana, and I all went to 2 bridal shows. One was held at the Hy-Vee conference center and the other was at the Sheraton in West Des Moines. In addition to eating too much cake we got to  look at vendors from photographers, caterers, decorators, florist, tuxedos, dresses, cakes, muscians, dj's, etc. I got to visit with our photographer, cake decorator, and caterer. It was great to talk to them again!

this is an arrangement I really liked (minus the feathers)

some cool stands

poor Hawkeyes :(

Sean's parents had tickets for Sean and I at the Iowa vs. Iowa State game this past Saturday. Both the weather and the game were great! It was gorgeous outside...sunny and comfortable. We were under the overhang in the stands so we were in the shade :) Also, the game was exciting...a little too exciting! It went into triple overtime and Iowa State came out with the win. We wished the Hawekeyes would have won, but we have to let the other team win every once in a while ;)

The final score was 44-41

Cindy Dittmer, Me, and Katie

Me, Brittany, and Shannon

The stadium was packed! I guess it was the 2nd largest crowd at Jack Trice stadium

The night before the game I got my first outing in Boone experience. We went to the Giggling Goat and visited some friends. We were on top of a parking garage outside. It ended up being a beautiful night!

Thanks Brittany for these pictures I stole from facebook!!

Hi, I'm Amanda and I'm addicted to Pinterest

I would like to point out the update of our blog. I have added a tab to take you to our Pinterest page for your convenience.

Just in case you don't know what Pinterest is, it is "a social networking site that allows you to figuratively "pin" pictures of your likes/interests in a simple, organized fashion", thank you again to urbandictionary.com. Basically it is a site where you can "pin" things to your "board" from other websites, friend's "boards", stranger's "boards", or anything. You can also look at other people's boards to get ideas. As you can see from the name of the post I am addicted!!

Special note: Sean just taught me how to do the print screen function on my computer. Coolest thing!!...behind Pinterest :)