Flora Holland

I promise, the photos are coming soon. In the mean time, check out this video of walking though the Holland Flower Auction. This video is of walking from one end to the other of just one of the buildings in the 10,000,000sq/ft complex. Find out more at http://www.floraholland.com/en/.

We’re home

We’re back from our honeymoon and mostly caught up on our sleep from the seven hour time change. I took 3015 photos and after deleting the crap, I’m down to just 2772 plus a few short videos. Getting them all uploaded to flickr and blip.tv will take some time and I’ll post links here when they’re available. In the mean time, there are a handful of photos I posted while in Belgium that you can look at now.

We’ve done it!

Yep, we’re married. We were worried about the VERY heavy fog that we awoke to but it burned off nicely be the time everyone arrived at the gardens. The ceremony was wonderful and the reception was great too. I didn’t take many photos myself but my father took plenty. Mine and his can be found in my flickr account. Christa’s can also be found on flickr along with Emily’s on Facebook. There will definitely be more to come soon I’m sure along with the professional ones in a few weeks.

Thanks for everyone who came and all the other well wishes we’ve received. We couldn’t have had such a great day without you.

We’re now all packed and exhausted. Tomorrow, off to Brussels! Stay tuned.

Final update before the wedding

Flowers, tables and chairs were successfully delivered to and set up at the house this afternoon.

All family have arrived and we all had a BBQ at our place this evening.

Last minute cleaning is being done.

The hair lady shows up at the house at 7:30am tomorrow morning. (That’s about 10 hours from now.) I’ve suggested that I can sleep later since I’m not “getting my hair done” but that theory doesn’t seem to be being accepted by anyone else.

No, we’re not nervous. Thanks for asking ;-)

Early morning, the day before

My family made it in to town (mom, dad, brother, sister-in-law, and their four kids ages 12, 10, 4, and 2) and were over for dinner last night.

Also yesterday Mary and Diana met with the florist and actually got to participate in the making of the different arrangements and bouquets.

Today we’ll be hanging out with my family and Mary, Sara & Diana have the appointment to get their nails done later this morning.

Later in the afternoon, Mary’s brother and his wife will get into town from Denver and the all the immediate family will be over to our home for a backyard cookout.

It’s going to be an interesting day.

More (final) details

The tent in the back yard for the reception was set up this afternoon. The tables and chars are scheduled to arrive tomorrow.

Mary and Diana took care of their final dress fittings, shoes and jewelry today.

The violinists for the ceremony were called and we’ve finalized when they’ll be arriving on Saturday morning.

We’ve picked our vows. There’s a little tweaking to be done but one of the suggestions the judge provided are pretty close.

Mary went to the florists today to see the flowers. The red orchids that came in were actually pink but through the wonders of “dyes and sprays” they’re now the correct shade of red. She’s going to go back to the florists tomorrow to watch him start the assembly process.

Tux

We picked up my tux last night. We had a “free groom tux” coupon but it turned out that the coupon only worked when you had a party of four or more you were renting tuxes for. Since I’m the only one in a tux, the coupon was unusable. Darn that fine print on the back of the coupon.

And here’s a question: how come it’s ok for Mary to see me in my tux before the wedding if I can’t see her dress in advance?

Event times & directions

The ceremony will be at 11am at the Sunken Garden (http://tinyurl.com/n69asf). The parking lot is small but there’s plenty of on-street parking. The ceremony will be in the arbor just off the parking lot.

The reception is at our home. Best route directions from the garden to our home can be found at http://tinyurl.com/mmwedding. Food will be served @ noon.

A few more details

Mary’s found the coupon from the dress shop that gets me my tux rental for free. That’s a nice savings.

The invitations have been mailed. I think the final count was 26 invitations inviting about 55 people. If you’re expecting one and don’t receive it by the end of this week drop us a line and we’ll look into it.

Even if you told me in person or by e-mail that you will or won’t be attending, please e-mail Mary (her address in on the invitation) since she’s the keeper of the official list.

Remembering that Mary and I both signed a contract with the tour company that we’re only to bring one carry-on-sized suitcase and one day-pack, new pieces of luggage have been purchased. Basically, large Adidas gym bags and the “official” day-packs from Rick Steves. Other recent travel-related purchased include an outlet adapter for the few electronic devices we’ll be packing, inflatable neck pillows for the long flights, and a 16GB SDHC card for my camera. (Which, at 8MP/fine resolution should hold 3500 photos. That should be enough ;-)

It’s all in the details…

We’re one month away and counting!  Here’s what we’ve gotten accomplished so far:

• Michael and I went to the Lincoln City and County Building last week and got our marriage license.  We also rented Michael’s tuxedo and the reception tables, chairs, etc.  Still working on getting the tent for the reception… The arbor should be looking really nice by then as well.
• The final details for the bride’s and groom’s cakes are being finalized tomorrow, which has been quite the adventure.   The cake lady has a rule about no one else’s cake can be served at the same venue as her cake due to legal and insurance issues, so we had to cancel the groom’s cake with the caterer and schedule it with the cake lady.  Go figure!
• We’ve also made arrangements for two violinists, lovely and talented college students we discovered performing at the Farmer’s Market!
• The judge has also been scheduled, as well as the photographer and the caterer.
• The girls (Diana and Sara) and I are also going tomorrow for our hair consultation with a stylist that Diana used back in the fall who did a wonderful job.
• Sara’s dress has been fitted, Diana’s will be fitted on the 11th, and mine on the 27th.  We still have minor details to follow up on, like shoes…
• And last, but not least, Michael has been very busy printing the few formal invitations we are sending.  They will be mailed out on Wednesday!   Yay!  I think we’re getting there!

Our wedding will be nothing like this one...

Luckily, I don’t envision this happening to me all that often

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Booking hotel rooms

If you're coming in from out of town we highly suggest you don't delay in booking you hotel room. Seems that our wedding is competing with the last weekend of the Nebraska State Fair and the first Huskers home game of the season.

The Engagement Ring Has Arrived

We picked it up on Friady.

More details

The honeymoon trip has been booked, and we are now searching for a photographer and a caterer.

Wedding Cake update

We had a great time last week tasting various cakes and fillings for the wedding cake.  Misty at Sweet Art Cakes provided us with several cake flavors and several filling flavors so we could mix and match.

Here’s what we’ve come up with so far for the four layers:

White Almond cake with Apricot filling,

Chai Spice cake with Coffee Mousse filling,

Key Lime cake with Key Lime Mousse filling,

Pumpkin cake with Cream Cheese filling.

Engagement Ring II

We got the final computer rendering of my engagement ring yesterday!

Wedding cake

Michael and I had an appointment on Monday with Misty of Sweet Art Wedding Cakes (http://www.sweetartweddingcakes.com/).  Our cake will be similar to the one below, except with red and yellow orchids.

 

Wedding Flowers

The wedding flowers are red and yellow orchids.  The bouquet below is similar, but will have red orchids as well, and red ribbon instead of white.

 

Mary’s Engagement Ring

Below is the computer rendering of my gorgeous engagement ring!

I’m a gardener at heart, so something with flowers, leaves, and vines seemed especially appropriate!  This ring is extra special because we were able to incorporate stones from my mother’s engagement ring, and some stones from a ring that belonged to an uncle in the design. 

Michael's wedding ring

We've not made a final decision yet but at this point here's the ring I think I'll end up with.

The date has been set, the blog is now up

Yes folks, Mary and I have finally made it official and picked a date. We'll be getting married in a small ceremony at the Lincoln Sunken Gardens on 5 September 2009. So, in true Web 2.0 fashion, we've set up this blog for all the friends and family to be able to follow along in the planning. A lot has happened already but there's got to be a first post and this is it.

So far, the gardens have been booked, a friends husband has designed Mary's engagement ring, and we've got an appointment with the cake people on Monday. Of course, more detailed posts about all of this will be forthcoming.

Lastly, there's a chipin.com widget off to the left. We've bought the house, and combined two households worth of stuff into it. We don't need anything. So, what we're doing is that we ask that all gifts be in the form of contributing to our honeymoon. (This used to be known as "registering with your travel agent" but it turns out that travel agents don't do that any more. There's lost of places that do it online but we didn't like any of them so we've set it up ourselves.) So, if you'd like to contribute just follow the steps in the widget. 

We're excited and hope you are too. Keep checking back as we'll be posting any and all details and stories as they occurr.