I got some long awaited and very exciting news from Florida last weekend. It looked something like this:

That’s MOH M and her fiancee moments after getting engaged in front of the Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World!!

I’m so excited for her – we went out to dinner last night to celebrate and it’s fun to see one of my very best friends start on the crazy journey that I’m now in the home stretch of. Have any of you ever become a bridesmaid in addition to being the bride?  I’m trying to think of all the most useful advice I can give her without overwhelming her, haha. She’s already been gifted a pile of bridal magazines.

Congratulations dearie!

Wedding registries are supposed to be one of the “fun” wedding tasks you have to complete. But I’ve seen a lot of posts griping and moaning about how uncomfortable it makes people or how they don’t need anything. I don’t think it’s for everyone, but I do think it’s practical thing to do. Most guests expect it, and appreciate knowing that they’re getting you something you want and need. At the very least, you can always register for lots of sheets and towels, extra glasses, and maybe a few fun things, right? Right.

NEPA Groom and I have lived at home since college and won’t live together until we’re married, so we’re almost like the stereotypical couple doing the registry stuff. We need just about everything. Both parents have gifted us a few things already, like a coffee pot to keep my homicidal urges at bay wake me up in the morning, knives that I can’t touch before coffee, and a few other kitchen things. We also have some furniture we’ll inherit, along with some never used plates and flatware.

That being said, we still needed lots of stuffs, so I did the research and decided we’d hit two places, Target and Macy’s. We’ve been doing the Target stuff all online, though I want to hit up their scanners in store for a few furniture pieces. After our pre-cana adventure that’s soon to be chronicled, we stopped at Macy’s to start one there. The consultant was super helpful and got us started with no problem. And I got a free bag:

Yay <3<3<3<3 It carries my wedding pretties now. We spent about an hour in Macy’s scanning things like sheets, towels and some kitchen gadgets. We generally decided the things we wanted to be nicer, and in a higher price point, would go on the Macy’s list. Their sheets looked better than Target’s, though there are cute ones at both stores. Macy’s also wins with their Martha Stewart collection! After about an hour though, we were both pooped. It’s a little stressful trying to pick the right things all at once, so we called it a day and added more stuff online later.

My tips for choosing where to register would be:

• Check return policies. Make sure you’re ok with it before you commit.
• Check availability for guests. Older guests don’t want the intarwebs. They want to go to a store. Is there a retail location near the bulk of your guests that they can visit.
• Try to add more than the number of guests you have, but don’t feel pressured to “double” like they want you to. I can’t imagine needing all the stuff that I’m supposed to need. We’ll probably have a ratio of 1.3 items per guest on our lists. It’s a little extra to choose from, but not crazy big.
• Register for what you’re comfortable with. They’ll push you to bigger and better and crazier but if you don’t need fine china, by all means don’t register for it.

And finally, I’d say DO register for a few things, even if you’re against it. It’s a good thing to do, it provides your guests with some direction, and it’s not greedy. I hear a lot of brides have all this guilt over registering. Forget that. It’s a given rule that if you’re getting married, someone somewhere will get you a gift. They want you to like your gift. Hence, the registry.

How was your registering experience? Did you find it fun or exhausting? Did you go in store or do it all online?

We all have our guilty pleasures. I probably have more than most when it comes to wedding planning. My Google Reader is bursting with RSS wedding goodies, and I have a basket in my room filled with wedding magazines. I’ve been trying to wean myself off the magazines because after the early stages of planning, I think they get less helpful and more confusing. You see a new happy pretty and start to doubt the vision you and your groom have already agreed on. To avoid the stress, I’ve stopped buying them. I even threw a couple out last weekend. I was doing good, until I saw this:

Sigh. SIGH. Oh Martha, how you tempt me. The crafts and pictures in her magazine are just so PRETTY. This is one vice I’m not ready to give up yet. I wonder if I can get away with buying Martha Stewart Weddings after I get married? For the pictures….

Do you have any wedding ‘vices’? What are yours?

If you saw our engagement pictures, then you probably figured out that NEPA Groom and I are pretty big fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. If you’ve spent time with us in person, then you already knew it, and are constantly reminded of it!

The pain of last Sunday’s loss is still fresh in my mind I HATE YOU TONY ROMO, but I’m going to try and move past that to share a story from December with you. It’s the story of our very first Eagles game!

I was able to score tickets to see the Eagles play the San Francisco 49ers on December 20th. We planned a nice weekend trip – we would drive down to Philly on Saturday and stay the night. This way we wouldn’t have a long drive come Sunday morning.

Suuuure.

As it turns out, our weekend trip fell on the same weekend as a snow storm that ABC referred to as “The Snowstorm Of The Decade”. Thanks guys! As a result of all the commotion, we left early on Saturday to try and beat the storm to Philly.

Epic Fail.

What should have been a slightly under 2 hour drive took 4 hours. I drove slow, and NEPA Groom offered lots of encouragement. I was highly stressed about all the snow and he spent the trip trying to help me keep my cool. He was also the brave one who got out of the car on the turnpike to clean the CHUNKS OF ICE off my windshield wipers that were making it impossible to see.

The good news is I only cried on the highway a teensy bit, and we made it there in one piece. After a failed attempt to walk to a nearby Burger King, we hunkered down with the fruit and cookies we had brought with us and then had a good sleep.

The game was pushed back until 4 that day to allow for extra cleaning up time, but it was well worth the wait. Check out these pictures from our seats!!

Yes, as a matter of fact it was cold. How could you tell?

It was a rough trip but it ended up being a lot of fun. I was really impressed with how we worked together, even if I did wig out a little bit. It wasn’t a trip I think either of us could have made alone (regardless of the fact that we probably shouldn’t have attempted it together, LOL).

Have you ever had a moment where you got to test you and your fiance’s relationship and how well you worked together? How did it go?

I got a great coupon the other day from the website I’m going to order my invitations from. In fact, it was “order 100 invites, get 50 response cards free” good. That’s freaking GOOD.

NEPA Groom and I were ready to go for it. We trimmed the guest list since we knew it was too big. We made some quick decisions on the food so we could figure out how to word the response card. I was still nervous because I figured someone, somewhere in the family would be pissed because we chose the wrong food/worded the invitations wrong/didn’t ask THEM first. But too bad, I was ready!!

The coupon expires tonight, so I sat down to do a trial run before NEPA groom and I bit the bullet. Then it hit me as I counted up the final guest list again.

You don’t need an invitation for every person on the guest list. If you’re inviting 100 people, you probably need 50 to 60, max. Think about it: married couple = 1 invitation, person with 3 children = one invitation, friend who gets a +1 (even if you don’t know who they’ll be dating by then) = 1 invitation.

Ha. Ha ha ha ha.

Because of this, the coupon didn’t make sense for us any more. We’d be ordering a pile of extra invitations in order to get those free response cards. Neither of us realized this until tonight. It seems so obvious, but everyone I’ve asked was just as confused!

Did you ever almost over-order on wedding supplies? It seems really easy to get confused by this stuff!

I don’t know if it’s just us, or if this is a common occurrence for engaged couples, but I find that more and more people, mostly family, are buying us gifts for our new home, either for holidays, or just because they saw something they thought we should have while they were out. They’re gifts I would have never gotten when I was single, or just dating NEPA Groom, even if I had my own place.

Case in point, FMIL was out a few months ago and she found this cute little measuring spoon set:

She picked up four of them. One for us, one for her kitchen, one for FSIL, and then one for FBIL and his wife. So we’d all have one in our homes. She did the same thing on Christmas – picking up matching sets of snowmen ornaments for all of us to hang on our trees. It’s all been really cute stuff and I appreciate it a lot, but I do worry about people getting out of hand.

Case in point, my mom got us the following as Christmas presents:

• Eagles Shower Curtain
• Eagles Bath Rug Set
• Eagles Bath Towel Set

And we got an Eagles clock from FMIL as well. We’ll be living in the Eagles Nest, for reals.

I love all the gifts they’ve gotten us but it does make me feel bad, because I know when the wedding gets closer there will be more gifts, and they’re both helping to contribute to the wedding. But I also know I can’t really stop them if they want to buy gifts, so I keep saying thank you and being grateful, and being excited for when we get our own place so I can put this stuff to good use!

After you got engaged did you find yourself getting a lot of gifts for your new home, or “married people gifts”?

A couple of days ago, NEPA mom dug up a little something for me to use on my wedding day. It’s absolutely going to be my “something old” on the day of. So what did we find?

What’s this now? Not sure?

How about this, does this help?

Ok, still not sure what this is? It’s actually the bonnet I wore as a baby when I was baptised. We had a family heirloom christening gown that I wore, but I needed a bonnet to wear so my mom purchased this. The neat thing about it is, that it was designed to turn into this with just a few snip snip snips:

It was designed to be a neat little hanky that I could keep with me on my wedding day!

I’m not sure exactly how I want to use it yet. In all honesty, if I start the water works , this itty bitty hanky isn’t going to cut it! We will be carrying a box of Kleenex, methinks. I’m thinking that I might be able to use it as part of the wrap for the handle of my bouquet.

Has anyone else had a special heirloom like this that they wanted to include in their wedding day. How did you add it in a way that was meaningful to you?

So now you’ve seen some of the more traditional of our engagement pictures, I wanted to share some of the really fun ones. After taking our fancy photos all dressed up, we snuck in to a little boat house of sorts our photographer’s mother in law owned next to the lake to change. We brought some more casual clothes, along with a special surprise for the end of the shoot!

I have to say – if you’re on the fence about doing engagement photos, I encourage you to go for it! Even if it’s only a half hour in your photographer’s studio, it’s great for a lot of reasons. First, you get to spend some time with your photographer and see how they are when they’re actually on the job. Do you mesh as well as you hoped? Now’s the time to find out! It also helps you learn to get used to taking professional photos and can make you more relaxed on your wedding day. And of course, you get pretty pictures to hang up and share!

Once again, all photos from the lovely Tammy Martines Photography.

We went around to the other side of the lake to check out the view!

Smooching by the lake, of course!

I really love that sweater, and that lake!

More smooching, plus fun photoshop filters!

At some train tracks in Carbondale. True story, there was a guy that looked like a hobo walking down the tracks towards us during this shoot. Rather than wait (he was far away) we used strategic angles to cover him up with NEPA Groom’s head! We let him pass once he got closer.

This photo above is one of my absolute favorites!

We always stroll on railroad tracks, don’t you know?

Ahem. Yes, we love the Philadelphia Eagles. A lot.

We brought our own football, but I bet if we dug around in this alley long enough we could have found one.

We are super bad ass.

You can see part one of our engagement photo shoot over here, if you came in late.

I hope everyone is having a happy and joyous holiday season. It’s been a long and sometimes difficult month here at the NEPA Bride household, but I wanted to pop in and say Merry Christmas! I also wanted to share the first of our engagement photos with you now that NEPA Groom and I have had some time to sort through them and really take them in. Ready Freddy?

All photos taken by and post editing done by Tammy Martines Photography.

We started out on this public road in the middle of a swampy sort of farmland. We both like these shots a lot, even though we were just warming up and totally didn’t relax for a while.

Aaand this is where he starts making me crack up. Of course.

See that dust up at the top of the road? That’s the owner of the land driving away after she came down to ask us what exactly we were ‘doing on her property’. Seriously. Stealing your hay in our Sunday best and with a camera.

In a little patch of trees next to the lake nearby.

One of my personal favorites!

I’ve been a bad NEPA bride.

Between the holiday and work and um, Farmville, I haven’t  a good blogger. But I’m growing some SWEET flowers and veggies:

We’re in a good place as far as wedding planning goes, which is why I’ve allowed myself some down time to get ready for Christmas, and just goof off. We have:

• Ceremony location
• Reception location
• Photographer
• DJ
• Wedding party

What’s next:

• arrival of engagement photos (and posting of them here!)
• finding a dress
• pinning down solutions for everyone else’s clothes

Is anyone else taking a break from wedding planning for the holidays, or even for their own sanity?