Scanner Me!

According to the wedding time lines I've been following, now is the time to start putting together our gift registry. I know it seems kind of early, but as it turns out, this is no quick feat. I'm guessing it will take a good couple months to sort through all the options and really make our lists. Mike and I have already started a list of household goods on Alternativegiftregistries.org where we can ask for item made by local vendors at our beloved Eastern Market. This Thursday, however, we took the plunge and went to Macy's for the true wedding registry experience.

Image from Google Images

Before going to the appointment I had a couple ideas of what to expect bouncing around my head. On the one hand was the sappy scene from 27 Dresses where the main character lovingly picks up each item saying "And this is the umbrella holder he'll put his umbrella in when he comes home from work..." *gag* On the other hand, I couldn't help thinking about a former colleague who told me it was really stressful to register. I think he's comment was something like: "This is the stuff you'll have for the rest of your life! It's really stressful to pick!" I have to say, my experience was somewhere in the middle. For one, we did not go through the store scanning every item that caught our fancy. Mike and I only went for an hour on Thursday and only looked at cookware, and that was really enough. We had a great time comparing sets and cracking each other up. However, it was kind of stressful; you don't want to get a set that's going to fall a part or not work as well! We ended up selecting three sets, we'll have to read the reviews and warranty information before narrowing it down to one. I hope we can make easier decisions for the rest of the list... I can't imaging spending more than 10 minutes on towels. I guess I shouldn't jinxes myself, though.

Listen to This!!

First off, I want to apologize for going MIA. My intention was to write at least once a month in my blog- clearly that didn't happen. But to make up for it, I'll be posting twice in a row!

Photo of Drymill Road Band from their Myspace Page

December was a busy month with the holidays and traveling to see family. That said, I trudged on in my search for an upbeat, fun, and easy to work with bluegrass band. I totally gave up on my plan to see bands live over the summer. So I spent a lot of time in December sorting through Gigmaster.com and other sites. After emailing back and forth with a number of different band leaders and even conducting a couple phone interviews, I narrowed it down to the Drymill Road Band. This band has some great music posted online, is responsive and flexible, and has played weddings. My favorite part of the phone interview was when I asked my contact, Robert, if the band knew Hava Nagila. Robert laughed out loud and admitted that they had never played it. That said, he was sure all of the band members would get a real kick out of playing it on their bluegrass instruments and would love to learn it for our wedding. After our chat on the phone and contacting a couple of references I was ready and happy to book them. So, I did it! I found my bluegrass band for the wedding! Now I just need to figure out what songs I want for the ceremony, first dance, and other important moments.

Also in December (I said I was busy!) I finished making my Save-the-Dates. In my last post I wrote about the materials I bought, and in December I finalized my wording and put them together. It was a lot of fun and I think they came out well. Most people got an email Save-the-Date, though. That I did in Power Point. I found Power Point to be the easiest program for layering and manipulating the images without the file getting too large. Once the Save-the-Date was all set I saved it as a pdf and embedded it in an email. It was so much fun to make that I told Mike, "I should make all my party invitations like this!!" Maybe that would be a bit much...

Well, that's my update for now! Check out the Drymill Road Band and stay tuned for Update #2 coming soon!