Holiday Time...

Hey everyone!

So, it's holiday time (and exactly 5 months before the BIG DAY), and we're excited to be spending our first Christmas as an engaged couple together in Aurora. We got about 4 inches of snow over this past weekend (probably a lot less than some of you judging from seeing highlights of the Browns game yesterday) so it made driving downtown yesterday to see Wicked a little interesting. If you are at all a musical theater fan, we both would HIGHLY recommend you see this play. It was great.

Wedding-wise, we have almost everything big taken care of, and are tasting some cakes this weekend to get that done. The limo will be booked very soon, and the other big things we have left are registering and figuring out where we're going to get the tuxes. Other than that, everything is moving along and we are on task and on time with everything.

Over the holidays, we will be traveling some - to Anna's parents' this Saturday until Christmas day, and then I will be heading to my parents' in Virginia from the 26th - 30th to see them a little bit. Unfortunately, Anna has to work, or she'd be coming along.

Anyway, have a very happy holiday season, and we will be positing again in early '08.

-Bruce and Anna

Update: Wedding Rings Purchased

Well, another one of the big remaining items (and bigger expenses) for the wedding has been taken care of. Today we purchased the wedding rings, which we are excited about! We'll post photos once they have been sized and we have them in hand.

We look forward to sharing more news as we move forward, including the cake tasting that will be happening soon!

- Bruce and Anna

PS- We'll also be registering soon, so we'll be sure to share that with everyone as well :)

PPS - Anna just said as I was proofreading this that "this post includes everything Anna loves - diamonds, chocolate and shopping... The wedding planning is just now getting exciting!" Nice...

Update: Invitations Have Arrived!

The recently-ordered invitations have arrived. They look great and it's another thing to take off the checklist! We also have reserved the limousine, which is a positive as well.

Next on the To Do list:

1. Register for gifts
2. Finalize blocks of rooms for our guests
3. Figure out where we're ordering the tuxedos

We'll update everyone on this as we move forward!

To leave you, I thought I'd include a photo of the apartment with the Christmas decorations up!

Can you spot the animal in the photo above?

Wedding Invitations Ordered...

So, we have ordered our wedding invitations and are working to do a couple final things like get our limo set up, and a couple other things. Everything else is going well as the holiday season begins.

Hope you are all well...

- Bruce and Anna

Passports have arrived!

We have received our passports, not more than 2 weeks after we went in and applied for them... Apparently the backlog of requests has gone by the wayside.

Anyway, we have them, and are moving forward with additional planning!

We have also secured a block of 10 rooms at one of the preferred hotels, and we will be getting that information out to invitees at some point in the future.

Hope everyone has a nice weekend!

- Bruce

Things are Moving Along...

Hey everyone! You've probably been saying to yourselves, "Boy, I wish Bruce and Anna would post some new information on their Blog so I can get an update about how the wedding planning is coming along... It's been nearly a month!!"

Well, your dreams are about to come true, because we have some info. to share below...

1. We got the DJ signed up and ready to go. Over the next few months, we'll be picking the majority of our songs, but a sampling of what you'll hear is below:

Stayin' Alive
Three Times a Lady (yes Seinfeld fans, this song will be played, except I will not be driving a mail truck like Newman was when he ran over a sewing machine and it burst into flames...)
Jesse's Girl
Pennsylvania Polka (unfortunately not the Polka Boy version...)

2. The florist is booked, and Anna has had a couple meetings with him to talk about what we want... I have stayed out of those discussions, as I fear me saying "those look nice" will only lead to me being ridiculed later on because they don't go with the colors or something...

3. Anna has decided on the bridesmaid dresses, and her wedding dress has come in to the bridal shop. This is very exciting. She keeps asking if I want to see it, but I have done a good job of deflecting the conversation because I am not allowed to see it prior to the wedding. (See, I do know a little bit about this stuff...)

4. We have purchased our honeymoon flights and have reserved our rooms. We are going to St. Martin, French West Indies, located about 190 miles southeast of Puerto Rico... It's going to be great! Now, all we need are our passports!

Next Steps:

We are working on getting our marriage license, our passports, our wedding rings, figuring out where we'll register, the invitations, as well as some other small things like the limo, the cake, what time the wedding and reception will take place, etc.

Everything is coming along, and Anna has been doing a great job! I pitch in when I can, but to be honest, she is running the ship, and I am like a little Cabin Boy on the yacht that she is the captain of...

Anyway, hope to talk to you all soon!

- Bruce

UPDATE: Honeymoon Hotel Booked

Our honeymoon hotel is booked. We are staying at the Hotel L'Esplanade in St. Martin from May 19-25, 2008. Our room will be a deluxe loft, which has a second level bedroom with an amazing terrace which should allow us to see the Caribbean Sea. It's going to be great!

On another note, we have also been working to finalize the DJ for the reception. (Did you like how I used "On another note" in that sentence? A pun...) We've talked to a few people and received an info pack today from the one we would like. We'll see what happens...

For those of you who are girly girls and want to know about the wedding dress/bridesmaid dresses, Anna has made her decision on bridesmaid dresses, and is having her girls send in their sizes to the company so they can be made. They are very nice - I have seen a photo. I have not seen, nor have I wanted to ask about the wedding dress... Apparently that is bad karma...

Finally, in other news, we're heading to a Indians/White Sox game tomorrow night, so we're very excited about it (me a little more than her.) Oh, and Anna started her post doc today. We'll see how she likes it when she comes home!

Until next time,
Bruce

Move Successful

Look out Chicago!! Anna and Bruce are in your neighborhood!!!!

We got moved in yesterday, and are now all set up and unpacked in our new apartment in Aurora, IL... Bruce arrived with the cats on Saturday at around 4:00 pm Central time, and got into the apartment. Anna and her parents arrived yesterday morning at 9 am with the truckload of stuff, and our movers here in the Chicago area came out and unpacked it and brought it into the apartment...

As a side note, if you're moving and don't want to break your back, you should check out Craig's List and see if there are people who are willing to come out and load/unload your stuff for you... That's what we did this time, and it worked great, and was MUCH cheaper than last year when we moved to Michigan and had professional movers pick up/deliver our stuff.

Anyway, we made it, and already have our cable/internet set up, and are getting a home phone set up hopefully tomorrow through Vonage.

Hope you're well!

-Bruce and Anna

T-Minus 3 Days Until the Move

We are already packed up for the most part for our move to Aurora, IL. On Saturday morning, we will be loading the truck, and departing Novi for the last time...

Anna and her parents will be taking the truckload of stuff to their house, and spending Saturday night there, while I take the cats and head to Aurora to get us all set up with keys, etc. for the new apt. It's going to be a fun trip!

More updates on the wedding soon!

-Bruce

Florist Booked - More Honeymoon Information...

Hey everyone!

Quick update - the florist is booked! Anna did it this past weekend while she was at a family picnic near the wedding site. Very excited that just one more part of the wedding has been taken care of.

Also, Anna came home with some travel magazines that one of her bosses gave her about St. Maarten, which is an island in the French West Indies. It looks from the map as though it is about 200 miles (maybe) east of Puerto Rico... It is only 27 square miles, but has a lot to do. There are two sides to the island - the French side and the Dutch side, and there are a LOT of beaches. Both sides are apparently very nice.

Check out the web sites of two of the hotels we're looking at...

Click Here for Hotel L'Esplanade, which is ranked the #1 hotel on the island by Tripadvisor.com. It has only 24 rooms, and overlooks the Caribbean from atop a hill on the French side of the island. While you have to walk down the hill to the beach, it is within walking distance of a number of great restaurants and a beautiful beach.

Click Here for Le Petit Hotel, a 10 room hotel right on the beach. These two hotels are owned by the same company, and both look awesome! It is ranked #2 on that same web site on the island of St. Maarten, and is also on the French side of the island, in an area known as Grand Case.

Anyway, we have pretty much decided that we are going to do one of these hotels, and definitely St. Maarten for the honeymoon, and we can save Hawaii for another time - perhaps our 1 or 5 year anniversary!

Down to 9 months and 2 days until the wedding! Thanks for reading!

-Bruce

New Honeymoon Idea

Aruba... If we go there, we will stay here. Looks like a pretty darn nice place, and it would be all paid for by my travels throughout tha last 4-5 years... Thanks ONU and Delta Sig!

Anyway, we're looking at it as an option as well, and we'll see what happens. We have done some research, and it looks like there is a lot to do, and it would be a nice place to go.

Anyway, heading to Ohio tomorrow for a bachelor party of a friend of mine, so I'll look forward to reading any thoughts on this on Monday...

- Bruce

BTW, we're only 9 months and 7 days away from the BIG DAY!!! It is coming quickly, and we are getting extremely excited!

Take Part in our Honeymoon Poll

So we are are talking about two different options for our Honeymoon, and we need your help. Please vote for the option that you think is best:

Lihue, Hawaii (Island of Kauai) - Can stay in a Marriott hotel for free with all of my points from my travels. However, we would only essentially be able to be there for about 5 and a half days, because we wouldn't be able to get there until Monday, and our question - is that really long enough for a trip to Hawaii? Will we be too tired for our entire trip?

St. Thomas, Virgin Islands - Again, we can probably get a Marriott hotel for free, and since it is in the Eastern time zone, we should be able to get there on Sunday night. In addition, we will be used to the time alerady. The flight will be cheaper, so if we wanted to, we would even be able to stay at the Ritz Carlton for our trip, which would be nice. Only problem - is there as much to do in the Virgin Islands as there is in Hawaii? I don't know...

Please vote, and your votes will comprise about 3% of our decision. You have more say in this than you do by voting for American Idol... So, instead of calling an 800 number 50 times to vote for the next Clay Aiken, why not vote for our honeymoon location?

-Bruce

Wedding Planning Update: Photographer Has Been Booked

Hey everyone-

Two posts in two days... How about that?

Today, we booked our photographer - Suzanne Hall of Hall Photography. You can check out the web site at http://www.hallphotography.com/. She came highly recommended, and her prices are within the range we set at the beginning. We think she'll do a great job for us.

Everything is moving forward, which is a positive. Hope you all are well.

- Bruce and Anna

Update: Wedding Dress has been Purchased

Couple updates to share:

1. Anna has purchased her wedding dress! It is quite exciting for her... She did say that as much as she likes to shop, she couldn't believe that she only found 2 dresses that she considered purchasing - one of which she said was way better than the other. I can't wait to see her in it!!

2. This weekend is a big one for us - we're heading to Chicago to meet with the photographer that we have pretty much decided upon for the wedding, and we are also going over to Naperville, IL where we're going to be moving to find a place to live! We have a number of places that we'll be looking at, and we'll update everyone once we decide where our home will be for the next year... In addition, on Sunday, we'll be going to the Dave Matthews Band concert at Toyota Park where the Chicago Fire soccer team plays. It's going to be awesome!

We'll report back again soon. Big stuff happening!

-Bruce and Anna

Marriage Prep Class

So we went to our marriage preparation class yesterday in Auburn Hills, MI at the St. John Fisher Catholic Center on the campus of Oakland University... It lasted 6 hours and 45 minutes (12:45 pm - 6:30 pm.)

Let me guess - you're asking yourself what we learned in all that time?

Well here is the top 5 culminating in the #1 most important thing (according to the Catholic Church) we learned during the session:

5. Have many, many Catholic babies (We MUST procreate and bring the children up in the Catholic church. If we don't, we have broken our vows because we must be open to accepting children into our home.)

4. We speak the same love languages (Physical Touch and Quality Time were our top two "love languages" according to a test we did)

3. Joining finances is hard (We did some case studies to help us learn how to do it, and heard from one of our fellow attendees about how he has his own business and doesn't get a regular paycheck.)

2. Natural Family Planning is 99% effective (No joke according to our session leaders, who in a fit of TMI - Too Much Information - talked about how they used to use "artifical birth control measures" and it nearly ruined their marriage... Alrighty then...)

... and the #1 thing we learned in our pre-marriage seminar yesterday is...

1. Cohabitation = Divorce (According to our session leaders, who by the way are a Corporate Development guy for a hospital and an MBA from the University of Michigan who home schools their children, only 15% of couples who cohabitate before marriage don't divorce. According to Anna, our resident Social Scientist, the data that was used to formulate the 15% number was skewed and was misrepresented by the people leading our session... I have heard this many, many times since the session ended...)

By the way, if anyone wants to borrow our "Contraception: Why NOT" CD, we got an extra copy to share with our friends and family if they are interested...

Honestly though, this session did help us to understand a little more about the marriage process and some things we needed to think about, and so it was worth the time. And, it's done!! YAY! One more thing done and taken care of!!

Talk to you all soon! We're down to less than 11 months until the big day!

Wedding Photographers

Who knew wedding photographers were so expensive? Maybe everyone else, but not me... We have been getting quotes from people with a difference of like $2,000 for the same services... Let's just say right now that we won't be going with the ones that are on the high end of that. Anna's mom said recently something to the effect of "You shouldn't go with the highest costing photographer because you really only pull your wedding photos out every once in a while after the wedding. Once you have kids, you'll be taking more photos of them, and the wedding photos will not come out except for every two or three years just to look at them and put them away again..." Makes a lot of sense.

Anyway, we're on the hunt for wedding photographers right now, so if anyone knows someone in the Michigan City, Indiana area who takes good photos and doesn't charge an arm and a leg, please let us know!

More soon, including honeymoon stuff... (I've been put in charge of that portion of the big wedding festivities, so I'm really looking forward to sharing with everyone where we're going to go and what we're going to do!)

365 Days Until the Wedding!

Well, we are now at 365 days until Anna and I will be married! It is exciting to know that the wedding day continues to get closer and closer.

So, where are we in the planning?

Well, we have the reception hall and the church booked. We are going next month for our wedding classes here in the Detroit area. We are beginning to explore photographers and DJs, and are putting together the wedding invitation list, as well as seeing who may need hotel rooms. Looks like we're going to need about 50 if everyone is able to make it...

Anna is continuing to look at wedding dresses in these HUGE wedding magazines that are like 800 pages or something and I am trying to see how we're going to be able to do our honeymoon for the least amount of money... I think I will have enough Marriott Rewards points for our hotel to be free, but I don't think I'll have enough Frequent Flyer miles to be able to get that for free. Perhaps though... We'll have to see.

Anyway, with only 365 days to go, we are starting to ramp up a little in our planning, and I will be doing more posting here as more plans become finalized.

We are very excited! Thanks for reading.

-Bruce

Anna's Bridal Party

Hey everyone! Sorry for the delay in posting, but I have been a little busy with work...

Anna has decided upon her bridal party, and they are below:

Maid of Honor - Liz Zona, Anna's cousin
Maid of Honor - Elaine Holmes, Anna's friend from college
Bridesmaid - Erica Presto, Anna's friend from college
Bridesmaid - Erin Hanrahan, Anna's friend from grad school

So, now that this is taken care of, we're working on getting our marriage classes taken care of at the local Catholic church. We'll see how that goes. In addition, we are currently finishing our guest list, and will be working on some other stuff as we move forward.

Hope everyone is well!

Date Set

The wedding date has been set - May 17, 2008. The church and reception hall are both all set for the event, and we are looking forward to continuing the planning...

More details will be posted as we move forward, so check back often...

Details Moving Forward...

We've selected the following sites for our wedding and reception...

Wedding

St. Ann of the Dunes (in Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore)

433 West Golfwood Road

Beverly Shores, Indiana 46301- 0727

www.st-ann-of-the-dunes.org

Reception

Waterbird Banquet Center

558 Indian Boundary Rd

Chesterton, IN 46304

www.waterbirdbanquets.com

The Banquet Center is attached to two hotels, a Best Western and a place called the Waterbird Lakeside Inn - which will most likely be our hotels of choice for the wedding. Easy access to the rooms from the reception, so in case you imbibe a bit too much, you can get back to your room easily and safely. There is also a Hilton Garden Inn about 3 miles away, so that is an option as well. We'll post more soon...

We are working on scheduling it for the weekend of May 17, 2008. More details will be posted when we have finalized them.

We're VERY excited to have this stuff out of the way!

Bruce's Wedding Party Set...

Who in their right mind would want to be in the wedding party of
the idiot to the right?

So, my wedding party is set, even though we haven't finalized a date for the shindig yet... Anna is still working on finalizing hers, and we're talking about readers, etc., so more info will be forthcoming on that stuff. However, thought I would post my party just so people know...

Best Man:

• Joel Hammond (my brother)

Groomsmen:

• Pete Grasso (friend from college and Fraternity brother)


• Don Morrow (friend from college and Fraternity brother)


• Todd Bailey (friend from college and PR mastermind)

Should be a good time, and we're excited that plans are starting to get underway. We're traveling up to the Michigan City, IN area, where the wedding will take place, the weekend of March 9 to look at potential reception locations, so that will be exciting.

Check back often for more updates... Until the next time...

-Bruce

Engaged!

Well, on Saturday, February 10, Anna and I became engaged. It happened in the afternoon at our apartment, and Anna was VERY surprised. We are extremely excited, and we will be posting on here with updated information as we make decisions. Check back often for new photos, comments, etc. about the wedding and the planning.

Below are some photos that were taken immediately afterwards...

Above: Anna showing off the hardware...

Anna and me after the proposal (no need for any bald comments... I've heard them all!)