We are currently looking for a hotel in the Roanoke area where we can reserve a block of rooms for our guests. We will post more information on the Wedding Info page once we have settled on a location. Stay tuned!
Well, we’ve had another wave of progress in planning. We’ve sent some important e-mails, had important meetings, and made important phone calls! Vague enough for you??
The most exciting news in the set is that we have found our officiant! Once we send her some money, we are guaranteed to actually be married on our wedding day! What a thought. 
After talking to her we have a basic outline of what we want in our ceremony, and we’ll meet with her again in May and July to hash everything out for sure. We are definitely looking forward to working with her, I’m really excited to see what we end up with for this important day!
Other (just as exciting) news is that we have started to recruit family helpers for different aspects of the day. This process will go on for a few more months, so please don’t feel too let down if you haven’t been roped into work yet! (or should I say, don’t start celebrating?) We’ll announce a few of these “appointments” later on the blog, and we will certainly appreciate any setup or cleanup help that is offered on our wedding day! And if you just want to come, enjoy, and then leave…that’s fine too. 
We have also finally received all of our invitation paraphernalia, so hopefully in the next few weeks we’ll start sending invitations! ::begin shameless plug:: If you are someone who doesn’t keep every piece of an invitation for all of eternity, please remember to recycle! All of the invitation packet, including the envelope, is recyclable! ::end shameless plug::
The Ides of March seems to be very good to our family. Today is the 1 year anniversary of our engagement, so Happy Engagement to us! It is also Tim’s father’s birthday, as well as my cousin Kristina and her husband Curtis’s wedding anniversary. So, Happy Ides of March to everyone!
We’ve accomplished a lot in the past year, both related and unrelated to the wedding. We started off with so many things to do that it was very overwhelming, but we’ve tackled many of them: booking a venue, DJ, caterer, cake baker, photographer, ceremony musicians, and attendants; finding a wedding dress; choosing rental items, wines, a wedding date, and invitations; taking engagement photos; and probably other things I’m forgetting at the moment. Just that list makes the year feel very successful! In addition, we bought a car together (used Honda Fit) in December, and have already made three trips to VA in it. Tim has taught a class as the primary instructor twice, and I’ve both been a TA and a grader. We’ve attended many weddings, and still have more to attend before our own Big Day.
We still have much more to do for the wedding, but it’s nice that we have 4 more months. At the same time, only having 4 months means that it is coming very quickly!
Last week we invited a group of friends over to taste some wines that we might serve at our wedding. We had a great time tasting the different wines and discussing their characteristics — “Do I detect a hint of juniper with a background of pencil shavings?”
While we aren’t exactly wine connoisseurs, we were able to pick out a few that we think will be nice for our summer wedding. The clearest victor was a fruity chardonnay that had a very refreshing taste — “like a garden party in my mouth” according to one of our critics. We tasted two merlots and a cabernet sauvignon as well, but had a little more trouble picking out a favorite. I’m not sure if this is because the reds were naturally more complex than the whites, or just because we did the reds last so our tasting skills were already slightly clouded…
In any case, we had a lot of fun, and are sure we’ll be able to pick out a good selection for the wedding!
We just ordered our wedding invitations!! It’s very exciting to be able to check one more thing off the very long to-do list. We ended up getting them from Wedding Paper Divas. I had seen their invitations previously, but had not realized that many of them are printed on recycled paper! It was very exciting to find that out last week when I was doing an exasperated internet search for invitations. They have so many designs that I absolutely love, it was hard to choose! We narrowed it down to 5 last week, then sent them to my mom and sister to get their two cents. In the end we picked one that was one of our favorites as well as one of theirs. That worked out well!
I’m very excited to share them with everyone, but of course that will have to wait until they are sent out in a few months! You’ll have to hold your breath in anticipation until then (Yes, I really am joking…I haven’t turned into a crazy bride yet!).
But of course, ordering invitations means we have also set a TIME for the ceremony to begin! Our ceremony will begin at 4:30 PM, so set your calendars and countdowns! We look forward to seeing you there!
a friend's wedding cake from 2009
We are excited about our DJ as he has excellent reviews online, and the added bonus is that he is a Virginia Tech Alum! We are looking forward to a great MC and great music throughout the evening of our reception. Last Friday we tasted cake with Evie at Wildflour Bakery, and fell in love with almost everything we ate. We now have our 3 layer (3 flavor) cake ordered, and have even determined the decoration style! I wasn’t sure we would ever figure this out, but we had great inspiration from previous photos and one of her own photos, that made it very easy to have a design determined. I am very excited to eat the cake again!
My shoes also make me happy because I stumbled upon them, and they are both gorgeous and comfortable; a winning combination! The only sad part is now I don’t get to go shoe shopping for the wedding, which I had really been looking forward to! How often do you get to look for fancy wedding shoes?? But really, it’s nice to have one more thing I don’t have to worry about anymore.
In addition, we stopped by Tim’s mom’s house on the way back up to MA, and she talked with us for many hours about decorations and flowers. We now have a plan for table centerpieces that we will most likely stick with! We still need to figure out a few more things (such as bridesmaid dresses, general decorations, officiant…), but it’s really coming together, and most of the things that are left will not require us to be in VA before our spring break!
Between Christmas and New Years we were in Lynchburg and therefore able to spend some time on wedding planning. We tried out our potential caterer and decided we liked their food. All that is left for now is to mail them the check to reserve our date!
We also spent a day meeting with potential photographers. We easily removed two photographers from the list: one was too inexperienced, and another was both too expensive and not really a good match for us personally. It was much harder, however, to choose between our two favorite photographers! We loved their personalities, we loved their photographs, and we thought they would both do an excellent job at our wedding. Their prices were also similar, as were their number of years of experience.
In the end we had to make a decision though, and have now booked Sam Stroud to photograph our wedding! We are looking forward to working with him and seeing what great photographs he will create for us!
You would think that picking photographers would be easy, right? You look at their pictures, you look at what they will include (like high res images!), you look at their price, you figure out if all of it is in your range, and then you choose. But where do you start?
I’m currently looking for photographers to meet with while we are in town over the holidays (with what little time we’ll have!). Most of them have nice photos on their websites, and some are more to my liking than others. Most of the prices are around the same range, as I just move on if I find someone outside of our price range (I don’t even look at their albums). I guess the best thing to do is meet with a handful of the most promising and then make a decision? Or just pick the first one we meet and like? I really love photography and am a little picky about photographs (photographers who can’t frame a picture nicely or deal with varied lighting correctly need not apply!), so I don’t want to end up with subpar photos. If we could have done better ourselves, I will be very sad in the end.
So does anyone have suggestions on choosing a photographer? Sure, there’s advice online and in books, but I’m looking more for advice from people who have done it before for their own wedding (or a family member’s wedding). Is there anything you wish you had found out? Or anything you are glad you asked about or considered when choosing your photographer?
We now have a location for our ceremony and reception! The location is called Boxtree Lodge, and is in Vinton, VA. Vinton is just outside of Roanoka, VA. We are very excited about using this location for our wedding! The ceremony itself will be outside in one of two places: either at the gazebo, or behind the gazebo in a field facing the mountains. We will decide closer to the time of the wedding, and after we’ve had a chance to visit the location again. The reception will be primarily inside the lodge itself, with easy access to extra seating outside, as well as a playground for the kids. We think this location will lend itself well to a fun reception and beautiful ceremony.
If you want to look for it on a map, the address is: 
2393 Hammond Drive
Vinton, VA 24179-2370
We’ll provide directions and more information later. We’ll also provide travel, hotel, and activity suggestions for those of you who are coming from out of town. It’s so exciting to really make progress on all of this planning!
