According to Martha Stewart our wedding is only 320 days away. When I see the convenient little countdown it makes my heart go pitter patter with excitement and fear. Fear that I have to plan one of the biggest days of my life in less then a year. Excitement cause I LOVE parties and I LOVE my fiance whom I will join in marriage during this really fabulous party. Often times I think that I need to calm down because my wedding is actually over 10 months away. How can I possibly think about wedding details every day ALL day for the next 320 days?!

*Sigh* I have managed to think constantly about wedding stuff and uhm, procrastinate while working and daydream by looking at Style Me Pretty, Weddingbee and other blogs non stop for wedding inspiration. You see, I am challenged when it comes to picking wedding colors and/or a wedding theme. Not only cannot I not pick something but I am creatively and artistically challenged as well. My engineering degree has served me well but it certainly is not helping when it comes to planning all the fun graphic, designy parts of the biggest party of my life.

I pose another challenge upon myself in the fact that I hate anything overdone and cliche. I like to think of myself as a cool, original, punky, only slightly traditional bride. My ceremony and reception will be at this amazing Beach Club with a permanent tent (complete with cabana stripes) on the beach. On the beach as in the backdrop for everything will be the Amazing Atlantic Ocean and New England beach complete with the imperfect beach fence. The venue is very Miss PrettyKitty and Mr HandsomeCat, we live near the beach in California and exude that laid back vibe. However, whenever I express that I cannot find the perfect colors or perfect theme for the wedding it always elicits the same reactions from people, "How about Starfish?" Or "How about flip flops?", "Beach Chairs?" Which elicits the same reaction from me...retching. *Sigh* I fear that time will eventually elapse and I will either have to select one of the overdone cliche options or I will freak out and pick something so not us, like a formal chandelier or something.

I know that I have no readers yet, but maybe someone will come along soon with a cute, kitchy, slightly different ideas for color scheme and a theme.

I must admit, I am officially obsessed. I mean, I knew I was wedding obsessed weeks ago. Actually, I knew I was wedding obsessed before I was even engaged, like 10 years ago. At the tender age of 18 I was a freshman in college (Go Nittany Lions) and new to my first serious relationship which ignited the wedded bliss desire in me. Not to mention my roommate and budding best friend was in a serious relationship and we loved to late night gab about when and how we would wed.

This is when I discovered TLC's "The Wedding Story." This lovely hour long show became my must watch tv, years before TiVo in times when I would actually skip class just to watch a really great episode. Oh, how that show shaped my life, how it prepared me to obsess about weddings for years and years to come.

Fast forward, 10 years and many boyfriends, always a bridesmaid/wedding guest later and here I am newly engaged and finally getting to oogle bridal magazines for an actual planned wedding. And is it me or have the channels added and stepped up their wedding programming? I mean now there is "Whose Wedding is it Anyway?" (love, love, love), "Platinum Weddings", "Married Away", "I Do", "Rock the Reception" ect, ect, ect. I could just spend hours and days watching these programs, thankfully I haven't. But I did realize that today I spent several hours of my time today reading and obsessing over one single website: www.weddingbee.com Future brides out there, if you have not gone here, it is an amazing community and forum for all sorts of inspiration and ideas. I just warn you, do not go there if you have something important to do...like work.

Really $599?

Ok, so as I set out in engaged happiness I started to think about all the amazing DIY projects I could do for the wedding. I've always been a bit of a crafter (thanks Nana!) and even though our budget isn't small, well it's not unlimited either, so the projects can help save us money too.

For full disclosure, I am an engineer therefore it somewhat makes me graphically and artistically challenged. Therefore, I cannot draw/paint/sculpt my way out of anything. However, I did think that I should be able to design and make our Save the Dates (STD) and Invitations. So, like any good engineer, I started with research, lots and lots of research on how others have and advise the DIY Invites. I have seen many fabulous and creative designs, designs I would die for, things I wish my left brained brain would think up, but overwhelming I have noticed one thing, these talented brides and grooms have use more often then not Adobe Illustrator to develop their designs. After a quick google search I found out the this genius little piece of software costs $599???? Seriously, $599??? Am I missing something here? Are people really paying $599 for this software to design their wedding paper goods? Or do these people already have the software from other careers and adventures? Cause shelling out that much for software alone is just too much for me to bear without a guarantee that I will even create something splendidly wonderful for my invitations.

Maybe someone out in cyberspace is hearing me and can answer my question. For now, I'll just go sulk around Michael's and try to get the creative (damn right brain) going.

Hmmm, first off hello. Take it easy on me, I'm new. And even though most of my close friends and family know that I'm loud, outgoing and a tad wild; I'm shy when I first meet new people. Especially large groups of people, and well, the internet, yeah, thats a pretty intensely large group.

The reason for this blog, that's easy, recently I have become wedding obsessed...ok, well maybe not recently, I'll get into that later. I should say recently I have become engaged, as in 4 weeks ago, diamond on finger with a bright, shiny new fiance. That word is still crazily awkward. So this blog will be my attempt to direct all my wedding energies in one direction and hopefully get some helpful advice from strangers who care about what I'm doing.

Hopefully, this blog will help and hopefully I will be able to keep it going. I'm one of those Leos who can never keep a diary/blog/journal no matter how hard I try. I'm thinking it might work this time as the internet has been my best friend lately, while researching all about wedding planning, and distracting me from work.

My wedding is less then 11 months away which is freaking me out, but the good news is that I have a date, ceremony/reception site. But I still feel SOOO behind. And to make matters worse, I'm planning from afar, like the complete opposite side of the country. I live in lovely Southern California and I'm planning my June 2009 nuptials on Cape Cod. Yes, this complicates matters, a lot, and freaks me out a lot. So I am sure that there will be lots of ranting, crazed and funny posts to come. Stay tuned....

Hugs!