The Big Invite Post

Phew! The invites are out, and based on initial reactions, I believe we have a success. And I have many tips and lessons learned to boot!

Here are the hard facts on the invites for those who are curious:

 - Pocketfold: From Cards & Pockets, in Sand

 - Invitation mat: From Cards & Pockets, in Sparkling Merlot

 - Invitation envelope: From Cards & Pockets, in Snow White

 - RSVP envelop: From Cards & Pockets, in White

 - Invitation envelope liners: From Cards & Pockets, in Sparkling Merlot

 - Invitation and supplement inserts: Printed by TGI Direct on bright white 100# text on an iGen digital press

 - Ribbon: Michaels, in gold

 - Flowers: Michaels, various colors (all on clearance so I'm not sure they're available anymore)

*I have to apologize ahead of time, because my pictures aren't the best, but hopefully they do them a little bit of justice.*

Ordering of all of the supplies, as I mentioned in my previous post, was a bit of a stressful process. Not because of issues from where I ordered them (which, by the way, was all from Cards & Pockets - I have used them before and love, love, love them!). I had previously purchased swatch books from the site so I knew what colors would work best with what I wanted for the invites. So I go, I place the order, I triple check my quantities (ordered about 10% extras just in case...which came in handy) and my order comes quickly in the mail. All was great except for one small detail - I ordered my invite liners in the wrong color.

Doh.

Thanks to the wonderful customer service of Cards & Pockets though, I was able to return them and get a refund, while the shipment of the correct liners shipped out to me. Which, brings me to:

Tip #1: Double, triple, quadruple check any order you place for this kind of stuff.


It kind of goes without saying, but even when I was feeling super duper careful about this stuff, I still mistakenly chose "Sparkling Sapphire" instead of "Sparkling Merlot" and was so concerned about my quantities of materials and not on the colors. Oh well, all fixed.

Then I invited all of my local ladies over to help with the invitation assembly process. I had all my materials, I had sent my files to the printer and all was looking good so I figured, hey, let's at least have a party about it! Wrong. The invites weren't ready. Due to a couple of issues with my files (fonts, stuff not lining up, sillyness), my actual printed invites were delayed. Which, brings me to:

Tip #2: Don't freak out about things you can't control.

Not easy to say to a bride on the edge, but I was freaking out about the fact that I wouldn't have the company of my friends to help assemble every last bit of the invites with me. But after taking a step back (and getting talked off a ledge from my wonderful fiance), I realized that everything I needed my friends to do wouldn't get done in one day anyway. So while I didn't actually have invitations for my friends to assemble, we still had plenty to keep us busy.

Now here is where I would show pics of my beautiful friends helping me assemble these things, but in the throes of wine, food, and a lot of fun (at least for me), I forgot. But here is what we ended up with:

Alright, so it doesn't look like much. But that's a lot of gluing of invite backers to pocketfolds, cutting of ribbon, and gluing of flowers to the ribbons. Within the next couple of days, the rest of the printed materials arrived, which brought much joy and happiness to my heart:

Obviously not all of them, but you get the idea.

The invites were variably printed, which means I sent a data file to TGI to tell them everyone who was coming, and they essentially did a mail merge of sorts (I am totally, 100% over-simplifying that process by the way) so that all of our guests invites were individually personalized for them. Like so:

(Yes Jill, you were my example) :)

And, as a nice convenience for us, everyone's names were personalized on their Response card as well, so we didn't have to worry about people forgetting to put their names on their cards:

There was also a spot for people to let us know a song that would get them on the dance floor. Love. Love love love!

There was also this little gem, that took me foreverrrrrr to do, mainly because I hand-drew the map of Traverse City:

Then came the gluing of the envelope liners to the pre-printed envelopes (TGI was also nice enough to print the addresses for us), which literally involved taking some glue, putting it at the top peak of the liner, inserting them in, and pressing down. Easy peasy:

After this, our dear friend Leslie came over to help finish with gluing the invites to the purple backers, and then inserting all of the inserts, while I stamped the RSVP envelope and invite envelope with my parent's return address and put mailing stamps on the envelopes. Unfortunately, I'm a big dummy and I don't have a picture of us putting them all together. Yeah, I know. But we were definitely in the letsgetthisdoneplease mode. Look at my little helper all nice and focused:

That's Allen putting glue dots on the pocketfold so they would seal, and also on the ribbon so it would stay put. Those ribbons are crazy little fellas. But if you look closely you can see it all nice and put together. Sorta. More detail on the design to come at a later date.

Then we stuffed them in their proper envelopes (because the invite name had to match the response card name, which had to match the envelope name). There was a whole lot of quality checking on these babies:

Which brings me to my next tip:

Tip #3: If you're going to individualize your invites, double triple and quadruple check them.


Going through at the last minute, there were a couple of oopsies (people who had Rehearsal invites in theirs that shouldn't have, people with same last names getting mixed up Response cards) so I'm definitely glad we were going through them all just one last time at the end. But there could still be some oopsies out there, so if there are...oops.

In the end, I absolutely love our invites. Not only the design of them (which I'll get into in another post because this one is already long enough), but the fact that all of them were individually touched, put together, and personalized for each of our guests. And the feedback I've been getting on them has been absolutely awesome so thank you to everyone for their kind words! I promised they were put together with lots and lots of love :)

They're outta here!

Precious cargo!

That's me and the invites on our way to the post office. Yes, I strapped them in. Like they were my children being taken on a long trip. I may or may not have held my arm out the whole way like my mom and dad do when they would stop fast in the car.

A much longer post to come on the invites with pictures and gloriousness, I just want to make sure people actually start receiving them first before I spoil the fun for them! I just got word from one dutiful friend that theirs came through perfectly so fingers crossed on that one.

But let's just say, the assembly took foreverrrrrrrrr. Luckily, I had the best guy and friends in the world to drag assist through the fun. Don't worry, they were properly fed and hydrated through my drill-sergeant assembly line. Hopefully I wasn't too crazy, but I did get a few eye rolls when I asked everyone to wash their hands before touching anything. Hehe :)

Woop! More to come!

It's been a busy, busy week!

In the midst of getting over a foot of snow this week, there has been lots and lots of excitement around here!

Exciting event #1: Mel and Scott are engaged!!

Scott was kind enough to include all of us in his big moment by having us appear at the Ren Cen downtown right after he popped the question. While I didn't get their first grand entrance on video, I did manage to score the slow clapped entrance when they came downstairs to meet us:

(Video all thanks to my amazing sister - she got us a Flip video camera for Christmas!)

It was all very exciting. And then things got even MORE exciting when I got a phone call Sunday morning saying....

Exciting event #2: Jill and Michael are engaged!!

As if one amazing engagement wasn't enough, now my best friend in the world calls me and tells me that she is now engaged to the love of her life (who, just happens to be another one of my most favorite people in the world...and Allen's too. There's a bromance involved).

Awwwww, love :)

So it's been a crazy, amazing, really exciting time with everyone! I couldn't be happier for my friends, and it's been fun to be part of all of it. Plus, now I have fellow crafters to help me with my wedding stuff (and I will totally return the favor for you guys too - this crafting bug won't be going away quickly!).

Speaking of the crafting bug...a little sneak peak of our save the dates:

More to come on those once people start receiving them. Needless to say, Allen and I have been extremely productive on this crazy snowed in day of ours. 

What happens here...

...stays here.

In just a few short hours, Allen and I will be departing for fabulous LAS VEGAS with our friends Elaine and Paul! Today also happens to be our -1 year anniversary, which means that exactly one year from today we'll be in Traverse City celebrating with all of our friends and family! So surreal. Can't wait :) But in the meantime, we'll be out having an amazing time celebrating our -1 year anniversary and hanging with some of our favorite people! 

PS: Don't worry Mom, we won't stop at the Little White Chapel while we're there ;)

3-Day Recap

The walk was two weeks ago, but it is still really hard for me to put the entire experience into words. There are a few words that come to mind: Inspiring, motivating, humbling, exciting, emotional, amazing, exhausting...but those don't even seem to do it justice. The people who had done the walk before had told Allen and I that this would be a life-changing experience.

They were right - without any doubt in my mind.

First and foremost, we walked with over 1900 of the most amazing people I think I have met in my life. We were crewed and tended to by over 500 volunteers who came out just to make sure that we, the walkers, were kept comfortable and healthy. I've never seen anything like it! Crew members up at the crack of dawn making us breakfast; medical staff tending to every blister, headache, ache and pain; and a security team made up of big guys on Harley's with pink mohawks and beards.

The one unfortunate piece of all of it was the extent of the blisters that I ended up getting due to the 90 degree heat for three days in a row. My feet are still in recovery! The heat made a lot of things unbearable for a lot of people - the blisters, heat stroke, dehydration, etc. We saw at least 7 ambulances take people away from camp because of how extensive the heat was. Those blisters also prevented me from doing the entire walk - I was only able to do about 45 miles in total. I know, I know, only 45 miles. But when you have a 78 year old man who is doing the walk with you, and beating you into camp every day, you realize exactly how humbling of an experience this is! However, crew members definitely made it a point to remind us that we already did what we came to do - raise the money, and bring awareness to the cause. The walking was just icing on the cake.

Downtown Plymouth - our new favorite city

The best and coolest part of the entire walk was the amount of people in the community that came out to support us. It was as simple as walking by a house on the route that had a sign up saying "Please Run Through Our Sprinklers" (something that was very much appreciated at high noon!).  There were families that sat out in their front yards handing us cups of fruit and bottles of water. It seemed like the entire city of Plymouth came out to celebrate our walking through the downtown area - they had to put barricades up so we actually had room to walk! There was a woman (we called her the dancing lady) that comes out to the walk every year with a giant speaker and an iPod, and she just stands out there every day all day blasting her music for us along the route, dancing and singing. She's a 28-year survivor. And just the amount of people that came out to support us, telling us we're making a difference, holding signs that say "You Hold Our Hopes" - it's hard to hold it together even thinking about it now.

The Dancing Lady! Still there on Day 3

Looking back on the walk, it's hard to pick a moment that is really my favorite. It could be walking through downtown Plymouth, or the rainbow that came up over camp on Saturday night, or maybe all of the walkers raising our shoes to the breast cancer survivors that walked with us. But if I had to pick one, it would be walking into closing ceremony with Allen. Just him and I, walking through the field in front of Ford Headquarters, overhearing on the loudspeaker that we had finished. I wouldn't have made it the entire last day without Allen and his support. We laugh trying to think about it now, but it's hard to look back on the walk and remember every mile - mostly because I think we blocked most of it out! But we do remember snippets, snapshots, and flashing moments that I know will stay with us forever.

Team Juggernauts

Rainbow over camp on Day 2

Raising our shoes to the survivors

Everyone keeps asking us if we're going to walk again next year. I can say with all honesty that we wouldn't be able to walk next year because of the wedding, but we will be out there supporting. This year's Michigan event alone raised over 5.4 million dollars toward breast cancer treatments, research and community outreach programs - but it still isn't enough until there's a cure. So yes, we will be financially supporting, but we will also physically go out and support those that choose to walk again. The people that came out and supported us on the walk are incredibly selfless and amazing, and we would like to give back what was given to us throughout the walk - inspiration.

The love of my life :)

Thanks again to everyone who followed and supported us on this amazing event - you guys are all incredible :)

Let the countdown begin

In a little over 60 hours, Allen and I will be starting our journey for the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk for the Cure. The 60 mile route starts us at Oakland Community College in Farmington Hills on Friday, has us looping and camping in Livonia for two nights, and ending at Ford Headquarters in Dearborn on Sunday.

Everyone, repeat after me: Please don't rain, please don't rain, please don't rain.

Thank you.

I'll be trying to report in from the walk (at least through Twitter or Facebook) to let everyone know how it's going, but I will for sure be keeping track of the entire experience while we're there, and I can't wait to share it all with you guys.

So far, I can tell you at least this much: This has been quite a commitment - and we haven't even started the walk yet! Ironically enough, that actually feels like the easy part! The fundraising piece of it has definitely been the most exhausting, stressful, and trying piece of this so far. A $4,600 required donation to raise between Allen and I is a lot of money. The rest is just endurance. We're not quite at our goal yet, (and you can still donate at the links above!) but I have hope that we'll get there.

A quick note to those who have supported us so far:

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

We know our emails out to everyone have been annoying, along with all of the events, the Facebook alerts, Evites, raffle tickets, everything. But many of you not only supported us emotionally through all of this, you have put in your own time and money, and that has taught Allen and I lot about what great friends and family we have. We are very, very lucky.

If you're here in the metro Detroit area this upcoming weekend, and would like to come see what all of this is about, please click here to get all of the spectator information you need - including cheering areas all throughout the Farmington Hills, Livonia, Plymouth, and Redford areas. Also, from what we understand, the Closing Ceremony is a very cool and emotional experience, and friends and family are also welcome to that. All of the information is in that link.

Everyone I know who has done the walk has said it is an experience that changes your life. I'll have to wait to see that for myself, and I know that we'll have lots of pains and blisters when we get done with this thing, but I also know we'll also have a lot of love to carry us through it. Wish us luck!

A little birthday shout out

Gotta send some birthday love out to my best friend since age 11 - Ms. Jillian :)

There are not many people I know in this world that can say they've known their best friend for over 15 years, and I am a very lucky girl to be able to do so. Jill and I have been through lost friendships together, relationships, break ups, deaths, a few vacations, hours long phone calls, long distances, and living literally a mile from each other. Through all of it, I'm lucky to have been with my best friend and my future bridesmaid, and have come out better because of it. 

You are the sunshine on John R road my dear, I love you! Thanks for always being there for me, back then, now, and for many years to come. *pinky swear*

(

That's us (at the top), in 12th grade :)

St. Joseph Excursion

We spent our 4th of July weekend up in St. Joseph, where we rented a house with a few of our friends. Nothing but gorgeous weather, tons of sun and the lake, and even hit up a few wineries in the process! It was such a great weekend, it was hard to come back. A few pics of the fun:

Gawgeous Lake Michigan sunset

Always sweeping me off my feet ;)

Our completely legal fireworks

PHOTOBOMB!

More updates coming soon!

Things going on

Why hello, strangers.

I have definitely been MIA lately (my apologies, for those who actually read this thing), but life has been busy busy busy! A few of the highlights:

School: I'll be done with my third semester of school by next Tuesday. YESSSSSSSS! I'm in serious need of a break, and luckily because I busted my butt for the past two months, I'll be rewarded with July and August off of school. I'm really excited, but I know this means I'll be dragging myself back to school in September. Temper tantrums will be involved.

Fun Stuff We've Been Doing: This past weekend was especially fun for me because we got to have our first Top Chef cooking night with Elaine and Paul. We've decided, since we're all fans of the show, that we're each going to take turns cooking fabulous meals, and then we will eat the meal while watching that week's episodes. I kicked off last week by cooking fillets with blue cheese butter on top, tomato and goat cheese tarts, and asparagus. It was straight yummy, don't be too jealous.

Another fun activity this weekend was our pig smoke-out with a bunch of the crew. Here's Jeff with his slab of pig:

Again, yummy. Luckily, there's more pig for us to cook up, so we'll probably have another event soon. Oh, and here are the flip cup champs after their victory on Saturday:

so gangsta

Fun Summer Plans: Allen and I have many fun plans coming up in the next few months, which I am super excited about (as soon as I can get out of school). A few tidbits:

• Over the 4th we're going to head to St. Joseph's with a few of our friends that we rented a cottage with 
• Trips planned for Traverse City, Chicago, and Vegas
• We have our 3-Day walk coming up in August (yikes!), with plenty of training and a fundraising event splashed in there as well
• Finally, my old next door neighbor and sudo little brother is getting married (yaaaay!) and so my family and I - sister included, yay! - will be up in Grand Rapids celebrating that craziness in August

Busy busy busy!

Wedding: So one little step of progress that we have made in our wedding planning is that we already completed our marriage class! Finally, one thing checked off the list. It was done through a local church, and it was actually really well put together, I have to admit. I really didn't know what to expect going in, but the one thing that I appreciated was that the speakers had an understanding of where the couples were today and not 50 years ago. Overall, it wasn't a bad experience, but it was 5 1/2 hours long so we're definitely glad we have that out of the way :)

Ok I promise, soon, eventually, I will have an official "this is what's happening with our wedding" update for everyone. I just don't want to put anything out there until it is signed, sealed, and deposited. We're close. We'rethisclose. Just have to get the paperwork in close. After that, I'll be happy and willing to dish :)

Things going on

Ho man - I've been off of school for a solid 10 days, and I have to admit, I think I'm enjoying it a little too much right now. I can't believe my semester starts up again on Monday. I'm slightly regretting this whole "let's take two spring accelerated classes so I can have them done by June" thing. Yikesss. It's going to be a lot of work, but I'm hoping it will be worth it to have two more classes behind me and to get July and August off (even though July and August already seem to be filling pretty quickly here).

In other news - Lisa and Mike are married! WOO! Their wedding celebration was on Saturday, and when I say celebration, I mean celebration. Lisa looked gorgeous, there was wind (lots of it), but there was no rain! And there was eating, drinking, dancing, laughter, more drinking, some spills, catching up with lots of folks, and oh yeah...drinking. I know there were a few people hurting the next day, (and I don't just mean the bruises) but it was definitely one for the record books. My favorite picture for the night:

Man, do these guys know how to throw a party or what? :)

Congrats you two :) Now onto the next wedding, where the Keifer people are throwing the party, so you know it'll be a good one!

The next couple weeks will be filled with some exciting stuff as well - we'll be doing some training walks for the 3-Day (you can still donate at our links on this page too, by the way!), Allen got me tickets to the Goo Goo Dolls (my fav) for my birthday so we'll be going to that next week, and most importantly, Allen and I will be going to visit my sister in Florida for my birthday as well!! I'm so excited to go down there, I haven't even seen her place yet. We have a whole weekend full of activities, and it is going to be a blast, I can't wait. She has also been kind enough to continue to send me pictures of her pool in Florida, which is cute now, but will get annoying in the winter ;)

It's been so long!

I'm sorry I've been MIA! I finally just finished up my second semester of grad school this week, so needless to say, I've been busy. On top of that, work has been super extra busy, so I have pretty much taken the opportunity to decompress for the past two days. Today begins my productivity once again. So what's been happening, you ask? Well you probably didn't ask but I'll tell you anyway.

So, I created a website for one of my final projects for school. Well, Google Sites was kind enough to help (seriously, so easy too!) For those of you who were kind enough to vote on my poll (and let's be honest, there weren't many of you), I thank you! You actually made my project look somewhat legit. Basically, I was studying the affect that the Internet has had on the Television industry - including advertising, cable companies, and broadcasting companies. Needless to say, Internet is winning. So my question to everyone was whether or not they would consider cancelling their cable service because the Internet has all of their shows anyway. Check out the results on my webpage: http://sites.google.com/site/televisionandnewmedia/ Visit, but do not critique, cuz it's already turned in and there's no going back.

Other fun things: We got to celebrate one of Lisa's last weekends as a single lady! Chicago was our city of choice for the event, and to say we had fun would be a clear understatement. We had a BLAST and got treated like VIPs everywhere we went. It was so much fun. We went through a company called VIP Bachelorette, which included a limo van thing to take us around, exclusive specials at a few bars, express entry, and no cover anywhere we went. Eight kinds of awesomeness. Some of my favorite pics of the weekend, thanks to Bridget's amazing photog skills throughout the evening:

All the ladies

Lisa & I

Bridget & I

Molly, Lisa and I

Lisa & Bridget

All in all, a great time was had by everyone. The whole weekend we kept saying how lucky we all are because all of our guys have such great girls in their lives for us to hang with :) And a few toasts were made to Molly for her mad match-making skillz!

Other updates: Did my first pass at wedding dress shopping, wasn't super fantastic. None of the dresses really stood out to me and I think it may have been a little too soon to go. We'll try again eventually. We're also having a wedding coordinator up north help us in our search for the perfect venue. We have one that is in the back of our minds as a standby, but we want to see what other options are out there as well. Hopefully we'll be able to find something that works for us!

Soon-to-be Mrs. Ross's Colorstrology

Another Colorstrology for the future Mrs. Ross, since her work blocked the site ;)

 Lindsey's Birthday

Lindsey's wedding















They're actually pretty different! Man I love this thing ;)

Mawwage

Today is the wedding of my dear friends Elaine and Paul! I'm SO excited and SO happy for them, and I know tonight is going to be a total blast.

I'm also honored to be part of this wedding - I'll be doing one of the readings. I teased Elaine that this is how I'm going to start my reading:



Congrats to the future Mr. and Mrs. :) You deserve nothing but amazing things in the years to come. I love you guys!!

The 'zona

After the craziness of the holidays died down this year (well, it didn't exactly die down, we just straight up and left it), Allen and I headed to Arizona to visit his brother and sister that live there. We were joined by a few friends and had a really great, fun, WARM time. And by warm, I'm saying it doesn't take a lot to convince me to move somewhere warm when it's 70º and sunny with clear skies. That blast of cold air when we came back to Detroit was not a fun one.

A few of the fun photos from our trip:

Allen and his brother Mark

The boys, after doing a bit of rock climbing (Jeff, Erik, Mark, Eric, and Allen)

Mark and Allen teaching their nephews "The Captain" (Alex is on the left, Andrew on the right)

"The Tree Incident"

So, a funny thing about "The Incident". Mark, at some point on New Year's Eve, decided it would be a great idea to tackle our friend Eric into the Christmas tree. He even went so far as to ask Molly permission to do so, and had the foresight to remove some of the more sentimental ornaments from the tree beforehand. Well, the thought was that the tree would just fall back into the wall. Instead, the tree crumpled underneath them. This is the aftermath the next morning. We all just decided to chalk it up to Nick (the cat) being pissed about not getting enough Christmas presents this year.

The Engagement Party

So I'm straight up convinced that Allen and I have the most generous and amazing family and friends in the world. How I know this is because of the mass amount of people that showed up to the engagement party that my sister Erin (aka maid of honor) and friends Jill and Erin threw for us. I'll say one thing - I had such a blast seeing everyone! Even if that's the smallest indication of how awesomely fun our wedding is going to be, I'm all set.

There was food (oh MAN was there food - a chocolate fountain even!), lots of Traverse City wine to pay tribute to our wedding location, a slide show (if I can get my hands on it, I'll post it), a trivia game, and my parents gave Allen and I a beautiful set of Waterford champagne glasses to use for our wedding toast. We're going to do our best to not break them before the wedding, cuz that's how we tend to roll.

There were many great photos that were taken that evening, but there are two that are my favs:

We call this one, "The Physical Challenge"

Yep, that's Jess proposing to me to earn extra points during the trivia game. She did a fabulous job because I said yes.

On my mom's Facebook (yes, she has a Facebook), she captioned this one "We were four...now we're five!" aaaaaand I was pretty much about to cry. I did tell her that my dad is seriously going to have to work on smiling for photos if our photographers at the wedding are ever going to stand a chance at a good family photo. He did pretty good in this one though :) Also, my sister has inspired me to tan...a lot...before the wedding.

Another big huge ginormous thank you to the Erins, Jill, and my parents for helping out and for putting everything on for us. Love you! :)

My fellow soon-to-be's

So one thing you should know about me is that I have always been surrounded by really strong, amazing, beautiful, smart, and all-around fabulous women in my life. I know everyone always says they have the best friends and family in the world, but in my world, it really is true. I think that I am really lucky to constantly be surrounded by successful women - and they all are truly successful in their own unique ways too. They are the ones who push me to be better and are the ones who listen to me moan and complain when I am having a hard time at work or school or life, and I am lucky to have found such an amazing group of ladies to surround myself with.


Additionally, one of the really nice things about being engaged right now is that I have quite a few friends who are currently going through wedding planning (plus one or two who have already gone to the big dance). They understand my pains, my moods, and my need to plan everything two years in advance, so that is kind of nice to have around. Plus, my friends are all so different, and it is nice to bounce ideas off of each of them because I know I will get different inputs based on their different styles.

That being said, I am crazy excited for this weekend. One of my darling former roommates is getting married next month, so we are all spending the weekend in Chicago to celebrate the end of her singlehood. And let's be clear, it's going to be a PARTY! (cuz that's how we roll)

I can't wait to see all of my girls :) Some fun to report on that when we get back!