Two Months Left!

Well, tomorrow will be the two month mark in the countdown to our big day. The posts have been few and far between since the busy school year started, but the plans have been rolling along. Today our cake chef mailed me a list of all the possibilities for our cake and WOW there are a ton of options. We are looking at a three layered cake, each layer flavored differently to ensure a delicious bite for everyone. I also accomplished all the invites this weekend and they will be in the mail by Monday. Najem helped me put the labels on about half of the invites, so he did what he could before becoming bored.
I don't have much else, it has been a really long weekend and I am exhausted so I am going to keep it short. Hopefully I will have more to say as the date gets closer.

We are in the two digits!

According to the count down on our wedding website (www.ewedding.com/sites/najandmelissa) we have 86 days left until we say "I do". Najem's post was wonderful! He told me Monday night that he was going to write something on our blog, so on Tuesday morning I remembered and decided to read it while eating my breakfast. At first I was thinking..."Oh geez, this may be a gripefest" (which I would deserve), but then I started to cry into my cereal. I truly am fortunate to have found such a wonderful man, who loves me and isn't afraid to talk about it. I hope he has some kind words left for his vows...if I know him he will blow my vows out of the water. By the way if anyone has some key words or phrases I could throw into my vows, pass them along..he he. I should probably start writing them now, or I will never find the words once the pressure starts.

With school starting last week I haven't had a lot of time to work on the wedding, but I plan on making some appointments this weekend and booking the rentals. Najem went and looked at tuxedos this week with my dad and stepmom, and he looked handsome and a little bored. I put some of the pictures below. With each new decision, it seems more and more like a reality.... I am getting married!!!

Okay the stress may be starting

Yesterday Najem and I tried to accomplish the task of registering. I use the word "tried", because it was not a successful trip. Everything I mentioned to put on the registry according to Naj was either something we could get elsewhere cheaper or something we already had at home. After Target and Macy's we have a combined total of approx. 20 items on our gift registries...not sure this will be enough. The day ended with me getting upset because his attitude toward registering and he sat the remainder of the time at Macy's on a sofa..not productive. So, maybe we will try again another day or maybe Naj will start thinking of something he might want.

Possibly because of this unproductive day I had wedding nightmares last night. In my dream I forgot the flowers and decorations and in part of my dream I looked in the mirror and I had a messy, frizzy hairdo. We have four months till the big day..I surely hope this doesn't continue.

How did they do it?

Well most of the wedding party is set, the bridesmaids have dresses and the invitations are ordered. Thank goodness for the world wide web. How is it that years ago people planned weddings without the internet? With the use of technology I have a wedding blog, wedding website, wedding mapper, and have pretty much ordered every detail from the web. I couldn't imagine spending hours or days driving all over town looking for bridesmaid dresses or invitations. I just put what I am looking for into my handy search engine and HELLO a million links with pictures for me to look at. I wonder what the future holds for my children and their wedding planning, because I am pretty sure that my parents didn't use the internet to plan their wedding. So... although I have spent alot of my summer planning this glorious day, I really didn't leave the couch much and I like it!!

PS: The picture doesn't have anything to do with the wedding. I learned how to use a new program during my eMINTS training and wanted to show you how fun it is.

Najem's Best Man

Well it is offical Najem has finally picked a best man. This was a great accomplishment, as he kept me waiting in the dark for weeks before finally telling me who he was going to pick. As for the other groomsmen, only time will tell. Chris agreed to be Najem's best man and we look forward to finding him a tuxedo that fits. This past weekend Chris was in his first bodybuilding competition and he won first place in the heavy weight class and second in the super heavy weight class (see pic, he is the tall muscular one). GO CHRIS!!! I asked him to do his flexing routine at the reception...still waiting to hear back on that one. Najem says that my blog is boring because I don't write about my stresses, but so far I haven't encountered any stresses. I am sure as the date gets closer and I realize the many details I didn't know I was supposed to do, I will start to freak out. But for now I have my organized tables and lists and things are going smoothly. Stay tuned to find out if I start to loose it...

Some Accomplished Details

This week has been a busy wedding week. My family was in town, so we had lots to talk about when it came to planning the details. So far I have confirmed a DJ, photographer, officiant, and flowers. My flowers are calla lilies (shown above) along with a few others. I decided on some fall type decorations for the chapel and wanted the calla lilies to also be festive for the season. I am excited that some of the big detail items are taken care of, but I just didn't realize how many details there were when it came to planning a wedding. One big piece of the wedding I still have not decided on is bridesmaids and junior bridesmaid dresses, but they do have beautiful flowers to carry. Next up is to get the dress situation taken care of, invitations, and maybe planning the honeymoon.

Check out the wedding website I made at www.ewedding.com/sites/najandmelissa

This site will come in handy for people to find directions, look at the wedding party and find links for accommodations and registries. It is still a work in progress, so check back soon.

Now for the details

Well, we have the dress, the chapel and now the reception hall all booked and they are all booked for November 22nd, so it is official. I am so excited that we are going to get married this year. It will be weird for my students. One day I will be Ms. Kern and the next Mrs. Agnew, but we will figure it out :). Now that all the big things are out of the way, we must plan the details. I believe things like invites, registries, wedding party, catering, rings, songs, etc. come next. However, this is were Naj's need to look at a task from every angle and price every option starts to run down our time clock. Me, I just want to make the decisions and have everything planned within a week. That way I can relax and think about how school will be starting back soon. However, I heard somewhere that planning the details is the fun part..I will let you know.

Finding A Place

So, we have the dress of my dreams ordered, found a chapel, but now we have to find a place to have the reception. This is much harder than finding a dress. I have found some beautiful places, that is not the problem. The problem is getting the date to work for our wedding date (November 22nd). I thought a November wedding would be easy since it didn't seem to me to be a popular month to get married..little did I know that late fall/winter weddings are becoming more and more popular. This leads us to little options..which stinks. Today I checked out two locations, a hotel and a knights of columbus. The Knights of Columbus really surprised me, it was a very nice room with chandeliers and a great dance floor..because us girls love to dance :). It is however a little more than I (Naj) would like to spend on a reception. He just keeps saying..."This is your day". The hotel was way expensive and just not fitting, it didn't even have a window and it just reminded me of where I would attend a teacher conference...not what I want to think about when I am celebrating my marriage. I am still waiting on one more place, hopefully I will hear from them tomorrow and then a decision will need to be made. I cringe at how much money I could spend on a wedding...I am hoping the big purchases will be over and the rest of the details will fall into place...somewhat inexpensively.

This is the link to the Diamond Room, this is the Knights of Columbus room that is the best so far. Check it out www.diamondroom.org

A Proposal to Remember.

Many of you know Najem and I met over eight years ago, way back when we were still in college. He was dating a friend of mine and conveniently for me it didn't work out between them. Some how our friendship turned into love and even though we had our challenges, the love proved strong enough to turn into living together and eventually a wedding proposal. Wow that was a lifetime, in only one sentence. I had waited for the proposal for what seemed like an eternity. We went ring shopping way back in August of 07, well December of 07 and February of 08 rolled around and still there was no proposal. I thought for sure our anniversary in September, Christmas in December, Valentines Day in February. Soon thoughts of "well maybe we will never get married" entered my mind frequently. Well in March of 08 we decided to take a spring break vacation to Sedona, Arizona and enjoy some R&R. Najem and I enjoy taking vacations as frequently as possible, so this did not throw up any red flags to me. On our third night in Sedona we decided to go out to dinner, normal as usual. Naj had mentioned before getting ready that we should go see the sunset, because it is supposed to be beautiful due to the red rock formations, sounded good to me and very normal (this is because my cousin (who lives in Flagstaff, AZ) had mentioned earlier in the day that the sunset is beautiful and we should go see it. So we took our rented convertible mustang and drove up into the mountains. We pulled over on the side of the road and we put the top down. Some how Najem managed to get me out of the car and sitting on the trunk with him. Still no clue at this point...As the sun was setting, he started talking about how the mountains in Sedona were one of the first memories of his childhood he remembered and how it seemed his life had made a complete circle. At this point I started wondering...what's up. This is when he got off the trunk of the car and got on one knee. He asked me to marry him and said a whole bunch of sweet things that I can't remember, because all I could say was "no way", "no way". I had waited for this proposal for a very long time and now all I could say was "no way". Well when he opened up the box and inside was the most beautiful ring I had ever seen, I knew he was serious. He slipped the ring on my finger and we held each other for what seemed like forever and then I finally cried. It seemed so surreal, I couldn't believe I had no idea...then all I could think about was who will I call first. It was a proposal to remember.


This brings us up to date, we have been engaged for three months and the wedding planning has begun. We have been back and forth between outdoor and small to indoor and 200 people. This blog is to keep you all posted on the events of our wedding and eventually our future after the wedding (little ones I hope).

Finding the Perfect Dress

As the wedding plans begin to take shape, finding a dress is extremely important. Wearing a beautiful dress and having my dad walk me down the aisle are two very important aspects of my wedding. Two that I tried on are pictured above. I have tried on approximately 20 dresses total, at four different bridal shops. I have narrowed it down to four, however the other three don't compare to the one I am in love with. I saw it on a mannequin when I walked into the shop and knew it was going to be gorgeous on and it was. I felt like a fairy princess in it and I knew it to be the one, now it just has to get here in time. Sorry I can not put up a picture of the beautiful dress I want to get, Najem may read this :)

Dresses pictured are from Gracie's Bridal Shop in Springfield, MO