Premature Wedding Planning

As most girls do (I would have to assume), I have begun planning my wedding before I've even been proposed to. But hold on, I'm not completely crazy. My boyfriend and I have been discussing it quite frequently lately, and when you've been dating for over 2 years you just know when it's ok to start planning it and when it's not.

My colors have been unofficially decided, I know the type of dress I want, I know the type of place I would like to have the ceremony, I know what cake I want, and today I even found what I think could be a possible wedding song. Scary huh? Meanwhile, my boyfriend (we'll call him "S." to honor his wishes to remain anonymous in a public blog), has just sat quietly by letting me plan without nary a horrified glimpse in my direction, bless his heart. It helps that he wants to marry me just as much as I want to marry him, and he's never been the type to run away from commitment either. To put it simply, I've got a great guy. 

So back to this future wedding of mine. I thought I'd give you a glimpse of my ideas and maybe someone will even give me some thoughts and advice for the areas I'm still having a hard time in.

The Colors
Originally the colors were going to be red and gray. S. likes the red and since it's pretty much the only thing he's really mentioned he wants, I couldn't just brush him off. My very first idea was to have gray and baby pink (Have you ever seen a guy in a gray suit with pink pinstripe?? It's hot!) but as I was afraid, S. shot down that idea. 

So I had the red and gray all planned out and was fairly happy with it, but then I started looking more at this other picture I'd found and thought it was so beautiful, I knew that if I didn't have these colors I would regret it. S. graciously allowed me to change my mind about the red, which makes him the greatest guy x10! And I still get gray too.

So here's the suit (and I do mean the entire outfit) that I hope we are able to find for S., because it's perfect:

I couldn't be more in love with a suit for S., partially because I love silk (the tie) and partially because he's blonde and I think light gray would suit him a LOT better than black or white.


Next, for the bridesmaid's dresses, I want THESE:

Aren't they gorgeous!?! I wish I could just pluck those dresses right out of the picture, because I love them and the flower arrangements so much.  I also think they will look really good with S.'s suit.


Now, the groomsmen I thought should have a bit of a darker gray than S.'s suit, maybe something in this shade of gray (yes I know it's a woman's dress...couldn't find anything better):

And I'm uncertain about whether to make the guys wear ties the same colors as the girl's dresses, or whether they should go with a gray tie similar to S.'s....any ideas or thoughts? I do want them each to wear a flower corresponding to the bridesmaid they walk down the aisle with though. I just thought maybe a guy might balk at having to wear a purple tie...

Type of Dress
I found this dress online at http://www.vponsale.com/ and I'm absolutely in love with it:

 I really like the lace at the top, and the way it's slimming yet falls into billows at the bottom. I'm definitely not a stick-straight-dress type of girl, maybe because I'm already a stick myself and need something to make me look a bit more curvy. This dress is available in white also, which is probably what I would get, but alas because it's online I wouldn't be able to try it on, and I feel that dress shopping in person is a must, at least for the experience.


My second pick for a dress would be something similar to this: 

I found this dress on the same website as the other one. Check it out, they have really cheap yet nice dresses, custom made!


Cake
Angel-food cake with strawberries and whipped cream...Strawberry shortcake! Odd for a wedding cake? Yes. But it's my favorite and it's my wedding so I can have strawberry shortcake if I want to! (Too bad red's out..it would have gone perfectly.)


Location
I would love to have my wedding on a (safe) cliff overlooking the ocean, because it's my favorite thing in the world. I found a great place that would be perfect, but I'm sure we can't afford it. It's called The Cliffs Resort http://www.cliffsresort.com/. I guess we'll have to find someplace else more in our price range. I live so close to Pismo beach, I wish I had some rich friends who'd let me use their awesome backyard overlooking the ocean! Haha fat chance though.


Song
Among others that would be good for a wedding reception or such, I've found one song that kind of stands out as a possible wedding song because it actually describes S. and I pretty well, including how we started out as friends over coffee. :) It's a well-known song called "I Finally Found Someone" sung by Bryan Adams and Barbara Streisand. I already have a friend who I know would sing that song great, he just needs to find a girl to sing the other part!


Here are the lyrics:
 http://www.lyriczz.com/lyrics/barbra-streisand/3829-i%27ve-finally-found-someone/

Well, that's all my pre-meditated wedding plans for now. Exciting huh? I welcome all tips and suggestions. In a year it might be fun to come back and read all my plans to see how much of them I actually used. :)

April Fool's

Europe is in the past, I have finally settled into the tiny apartment I am temporarily sharing with my boyfriend and a mutual guy friend, and the piles of boxes of things I don't need/have room for are stacked in a tower clear to the ceiling.

Yesterday was April Fool's. And I didn't let it pass without doing at least SOMETHING to inconvenience my roommates. So while they were both at classes for the day, I went out and bought my traditional April Fool's day ammunition: powdered red Cool-Aid. I filled the shower head with it, as is my typical annual prank, and on a whim decided to go a bit farther this year and fill the toilet tank as well. I figured at the very least it would be a surprise and get a laugh, even better if they thought maybe I, being the only girl in the house, had flushed a tampon down the toilet and it was coming back up to haunt them. 

My second prank was to switch the bathroom door knobs so that the lock was on the outside....and locked of course. Whoever went in would close the door before realizing something about their inside door knob was missing, and by then they would be locked in for as long as I desired them to be.

My third prank was to do a 'print screen' of my boyfriend's computer desktop, set it as his desktop background, then hide all his desktop icons. The computer screen would look normal, but when he tried to click on an icon, nothing would happen. It was a bit difficult to do this one because he has a dual-screen monitor, but I eventually got it to looking pretty normal. I shut it off and made lunch while waiting impatiently for my roomies to get home. 

 While my boyfriend and I were eating lunch after that, our roommate went into the bathroom. I silently snickered into my potatoes....until he came walking back out again and began nonchalantly making his own lunch. Huh?! I thought sure I'd heard the tell-tale hose-spray of him using the toilet, but I never heard the door fully shut, the toilet flush, exclamations of horror, or the rattling of a locked door. Obviously he hadn't shut the door, and if he did notice anything, he never said a word. How boring!


I had to wait the whole afternoon nearly before anyone caught on to anything. My boyfriend finally turned on his computer and I lounged, uncharacteristically, around by his side just waiting for him to try clicking on a desktop icon. When he finally did, he thought his computer was acting up and re-started it. I'm really bad at keeping a straight face, so by the 5th time he tried clicking on his icons, opening up all sorts of fix-it boxes and then turning his suspicious gaze on me, I was dying with laughter. Being the smart guy he is, once he realized I had tampered with it he knew exactly what I had done and fixed it in 10 seconds. Darn. 

He fell for the bathroom tricks too. Right before going back to class he walked into the bathroom, shut the door, and I promptly heard a rattling and accompanying groans. Our roommate, sitting in his room, asked what had happened. Apparently he hadn't actually used the toilet earlier....must have been the sink. I waited for the flush of the toilet and when it did, there came amused, laughter and an unnecessarily loud shout "Somebody plugged up the toilet!!" Of course he knew that wasn't the case, but our roommate's mind jumped straight into it and he yelled, "TMI!!!!!!!" 


I kept refilling the toilet tank with Cool-Aid throughout the day.


Our roommate finally fell for the last of my tricks when he took a shower that night after working out. I didn't hear anything at the time, but today he told me it had freaked him out for just a split second, not knowing what the red stuff coming out of the shower was. Sewage was the first thing on his mind.


Yesterday was a good day. Next year will be even better.