Questions.

When you get engaged, be ready for these questions:

When did you get engaged? (This one pops up for at least a month, maybe longer. I'll let you know when I stop getting it. It's the ring that tips them off. It's still kind of fun every time.)

How did he propose?

Did you know he was going to propose?

Do you have a date?

Where are you getting married?

Have you found a dress?

And this is just the beginning. Imagine how it's going to be when you really start planning stuff. And imagine all the questions you're going to ask yourself.

Blood tests.

After a relatively uneventful and not-fully-productive weekend (favors were started, the apartment was cleaned, but no exercise happened), I'm back in weekday wedding mode.

Today I thought I'd talk about blood tests briefly. Some states require them before you get married. I think it's one of those surviving old fashioned rules that was put in place to make sure you didn't pass the plague around. Let me google that to confirm... okay, it seems to be a concern about syphilis and only couple of states still require it. I suppose it was a bit more effective in time periods where premarital sex wasn't common and you wouldn't have passed it on to your future spouse yet. (It's your responsibility to get tested now, before you have sex.)

To find out if your state requires a test, you can look in local wedding magazines or just google it. Ours does not, thank goodness.

The reason this is on my mind is because I had blood drawn last week and there is a giant bruise on my arm. It's barely faded after a week. I can just imagine how great this would look next to a white wedding dress. And especially in the photos. So I have to recommend to brides that have to get blood testing - do it a month or more in advance.

In the meantime - anybody know how to get rid of a bruise?

Weekend wedding goals.

My fiance is off to visit one of his friends this weekend so I'll have the whole run of the place tomorrow and most of Sunday. Besides sleeping up to twelve hours and working out a tiny bit and maybe (but probably not) cleaning the apartment, I plan to get a few wedding things done:

-Start working on favors, specifically work on colors and prototypes and set up some kind of assembly structure.

-Keep researching photographers at my leisure.

- Start researching DJs (and open that floodgate of website nightmares.)

-Consult the wedding planning book and see what else is missing.

-Answer any outstanding emails/organize an email folder for wedding stuff.

Also, I am proud to say that today I finally reserved hotel room blocks and got that settled. I'm ahead of the game in that respect. Ahead of the home football game, to be both punny and literal.

Mail time, mail time, MAIL TIME!

I'm always super excited to get stuff in the mail and wedding planning provides lots of opportunities for that. Yesterday, I received two packages (which I shipped to myself - just let me have my moment) and an invite to a friend's wedding. It was exciting.

In package one, I got my new exercise ball and ankle weights. Let me just tell you it is a B to blow up an exercise ball. It came with a cheap pump and it took forever. The valve kept falling out, spewing air everywhere. The pump made this high-pitched whistling noise too, which the cats hated. And the instructions have all these warnings about over-inflating or under-inflating the ball. Apparently that could kill you or maim you or something. The ankle weights were easier to assemble (since they were already assembled in the box.) They're a little big on my ankles but I'll live.

In package two, wedding favors! I'm not going to say what they are because I don't want to give it away in case a guest reads this site, but needless to say, there are over 100 items stashed in our very limited storage space. I'm excited about this. It's going to be a project for me, which is why I'm starting so early, but it should be fun.

The wedding invite from a friend was great to receive too. I mean, we already knew we were going and when it was and the details because my fiance is in the wedding party. But I was actually excited to see the invitation itself to see what they did. It was a tri-fold brochure style invite, glossy, with a design that matched their site and save the date postcards. They have a Texas theme going and are actually serving tacos at the reception. It was a really cute, friendly invite.

There were a few interesting things to note. They didn't do a reply card, opting to have people email or call with their RSVP instead. It's a great way to save money and will probably work for them, but I feel like my mother would prefer the traditional way to organize responses. Plus, a lot of our family isn't that internet-savvy. I also really liked the way they did the return address labels. They made a sticker with this logo they created and used on everything that had their address on it. It was really cute. I'm planning on getting my parents a calligraphy stamp with their address on it for this purpose. It'll be a gift they can use in the future. They sell them on Etsy.

So real mail is fun. On the other hand, I get tons of wedding emails now that are so frequent that it's gotten seriously annoying. The Knot is one of the biggest offenders on the list. I may have to cut them off completely if it doesn't stop. I also get plenty of emails from David's Bridal and Macy's, where we decided to register. Stay tuned for a registry post coming soon.

Music.

I don't have much on my mind today. Well, that's not true. I'm trying to get the hotel room block situation straightened out now that we have the football conflict. And I'm thinking about photographers and registries and makeup and favors. But I thought I'd talk for just a moment about music.

We're thinking that we'll probably have a DJ for the reception. A band is great, but we're worried they couldn't cover quite as much ground. Plus, they're more expensive. We need to book this person by January, maybe even earlier. We'll be looking at lots of sites, I assume. I'm not looking forward to sifting through all that.

We'll have to think of something for cocktail hour since it's in a different location. I guess we should find out if they have speakers and just make a playlist of jazz or motown or maybe stuff from Wes Anderson's movie soundtracks. The acoustic stuff - though that might set a weird tone. And we have a plan for the ceremony, but I can't share it quite yet.

I think the most interesting part for us will be picking an appropriate playlist for the event. Something that works for the older and the younger crowds. Slow songs and fast songs. We're basically planning a prom. That made me shudder just a bit.

I am especially thinking about that first dance. We don't really have a song. I mean, when we first started dating, we danced to MIA's Paper Planes, but I doubt gunshots and cash registers are really wedding appropriate. Now we're kind of stumped. Any song we use won't really be a song that means a lot to us. Though I guess afterwards it will. Is this how people get to the "our song" stage? Did they not have that song before the wedding? I mean, unless you marry someone from high school you probably haven't gone to many dances together. Appropriate dances, that is.

My fiance (hi) is also what you'd call a music snob (sorry) so I'm very interested to see how this goes. Perhaps we'll have to set up percentages of how many songs should be in each genre or targeted towards each age group or appropriate for slow dancing.

Or perhaps we'll just play Arcade Fire on loop and call it a day.