Over the next few weeks, I need to print the invites and rsvp cards, create the leaves for the meal tree, create the table cards for the reception and maybe make the totes for the guests. Oh, and the favors.

Happily the cake and flowers are both finalized and for less than expected. Happy surprise.

My grandparents are letting us use my great-grandparents’ wedding cake topper! I’ll try to get a photo up soon - the topper has real lace on it and is 90 years old. Awesome.

We also found out our wedding date is the Feast Day of St Francis of Assisi, which considering our outdoors/nature/fall theme is simply too much of coincidence to ignore.

Three months to go..

We created an inspiration board to visualize the details of the wedding. Our “theme” is nature and fall, which shouldn’t be too hard with an October date. As we picked colors and details, we always considered how it fit with our idea of the perfect wedding.

A few weeks ago, I came across a barn wedding feature on Once Wed. Both Ted and I loved all the details. It seemed so idyllic and exactly what we envisioned. Maybe we aren’t having a barn wedding, but we can elicit the feelings of being outdoors.

Right now my favorite detail is the little birdhouses we found for the tables. Later this week, I am meeting with the florists to finalize the flowers. We are also meeting with the hairdresser, church, reception hall and hopefully, baker.

As a result, I now have about ten hours free again. I’ve been filling the time by going to the gym, meeting with our wedding photographer and now finishing up the painting I started so many weeks ago. Tomorrow we have enlisted friends to come help move stuff to the storage unit. There is so much to do and not enough time before the wedding or my moving date (end of July). A bunch of things are just going to be put away until we have five minutes.

Once things are in storage, we will have the hardwood floors refinished and furniture can be arranged. Ted and his friends will deal with the shower - it is coming out and new one is going in. Obviously that needs to be done before I move.

Well, I have to go.. I hear a paint brush calling my name.

It has been quite the weekend for Ted and I. We will be married in my hometown Catholic Church, which required us to attend marriage prep class. Friday night and all day Saturday, we tried our hardest to see the positives in the class. Unfortunately, the instructor was not very good and did a terrible job of making people want to talk. Ted and I amused ourselves and realized that no matter what we can always find something to smile about.

This morning we took our compatibility test. We’ll receive the results and spend some time discussing them with our associate pastor. That should be fun.

This afternoon, we spent time working on the house, though the “we” part is a bit of a lie. Ted did nearly everything. He is just so handy that he doesn’t need my help or suggestions, and life is much easier when I leave him alone. So I spent today looking up wedding favor ideas.

Before I move into Ted’s place, it does require some TLC. Over the past two weekends, I’ve repainted three rooms. I haven’t finished the trim work yet, but the wall colors are much better. Ted likes the living room color so much, he has agreed to let me continue it into the kitchen.

Next step will be refinishing the hardwood floors. Ted has plans to replace the shower in the bathroom and I’ll repaint the walls.

Finally a chance to use all those tricks I’ve learned on all those home shows.

2. Indie Wedding Guide - another resource of unique, DIY and eco ideas.

*Our wedding photographer is the amazing, awesome and good friend, UrbanTiki .

Ted has also selected the suit he and his best man will wear. We just need to get the men measured and then the suits ordered. All that is left to finalize is my matron of honor’s dress and what the parents are wearing.

At the end of June, we’ll be in Maine with both sets of parents to deal with the church ceremony, the reception menu, the flowers and whatever little things are left to do.

But with a dress on order, the wedding feels all that much more real.

The other stuff will fall together as we get closer and make a more serious effort towards planning. I will say planning a wedding in six months, one thousand miles away is a bit tricky. Lucky for us, my parents still live there so they have done a wonderful job of researching all our options. We are all meeting in Maine in June to have a marathon wedding planning weekend. When I say we, I mean my parents, his parents and both of us. It should be fun as the parents have never met.

Honeymoon discussions are back on. Ted started a new job earlier this year so he barely has the time off to cover the wedding time. However, we both work in the auto industry and get Christmas to New Years off. It would be a perfect time for a luxe vacation… Now we just need to find a place. Belize and Peru are the top contenders because we could spend a lot of our time exploring and being active. We just aren’t the lay on the beach-do nothing type of people.

Thank goodness I started working out with a personal trainer last week.

Going to the Chapel…, originally uploaded by mainegal.

Ted proposed on Saturday morning. It took all day to track down my father for his permission, but eventually he did call us back. There was no engagement ring, as I didn’t really want on.

Today, we were visiting our friend’s awesome furniture/accessory store (Mezzanine) in Detroit and saw this ring. We both thought it was perfect as an engagement ring. It reflects our personalities better than any diamond.

How so? The black in the ring is a rubber “O ring”! It makes me giggle.. I am so happy… and so is Ted.

I will probably start using this website to share the details and information on the wedding.