August 16th, 2010

20 days to go the final stretch is here

Less than twenty days left and the wedding nightmares have started. Not really nightmares, but just very weird dreams. Because we saw True Blood last night, my dad led me down a movie theater aisle to marry Eric (it was the vampire not the actor).

I have a billion and one things to do and never mind working on GamingAngels. I was so relaxed this weekend, completing DIY projects. Now I feel a bit nervous if I’m going to get everything done. I need to order the glassware (which while discounted, is actually adding $350 to the budget. grrr Then I have to settle the party rentals and the arcade. Both of which I have to do during the day which is impossible because work is busy.

Then add GamingAngels stress. We are probably looking for a News Director soon. I guess I don’t understand people that can’t seem to fit in GA when I work a full day, come home, write a few articles, workout and work on my wedding. Or maybe I expect too much from people.

No game playing today and tomorrow is a staff meeting, but hopefully I’ll find some time for me again soon.

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August 5th, 2010

Final fitting Friday!

How’s that alliteration for ya?! Tomorrow is my final fitting for my wedding gown. It should fit okay since I’ve lost a little weight since the last fitting. But to be honest, I was not thrilled in my last fitting because I started to have doubts about my dress. All of a sudden my beautiful, princess dress was feeling heavy and the opposite of what I want.

I go into tomorrow’s fitting a bit lighter, and hopeful that the better mood and having some family and friends there will help re-assure me about my decision. I may also bring my earrings and veil so I can spruce it up a bit.

In other random news, I applied for our marriage license. First time I’ve written my name and his last name together. That’s right, no school folders with our names doodled on there.

I also decided to get my eyebrows threaded instead of waxed. While my skin feels better than when I normally wax, that ish HURT. Man is it painful and it just feels weird. But it’s super cheap, so I may do it again.

Women go through so much pain to look good.

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August 4th, 2010

Centerpieces centerpieces

Looking tonight for centerpiece ideas. Trying to see what I can do myself and help save us money. Since the price for flowers has exploded on me twice now, I’m actually upset about the whole thing. I’ve decided to revolt and now I’m looking at as much flowers as I can possibly do myself.

It probably won’t have the total look I would love, but if I can save us $800-$1000, then I will. I think it’s ridiculous and we can spend that money with our friends or on our honeymoon.

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August 2nd, 2010

Who knew flowers were so expensive?

Matt and I just had a great wedding planning weekend. Overall it was mostly successful. Because going out there is a trip, we usually schedule all the vendors at once. The food tasted great, we had some wine, and stayed in the room that we’ll be staying in for our wedding (it has heated floors!). We met with our florist and I love her energy.

One thing I have made a judgment call on is in order for us to go with a vendor, I have to have a good feeling about them and each one I have. I’ve just felt a warm feeling. A feeling like they should be a part of my special day.

I do love the florist we picked out. She’s incredibly talented, a great person and even understood what we want. But today, we received a quote and it was almost 4k. $450 was just for the petals that are going to be on the ground. Seriously? Petals that are picked off a rose and are just going to be on dirt and stepped on. For the price of a weekend getaway? No way.

So now I’m looking at how much we can buy on etsy or do ourselves. I swear weddings are too expensive.

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July 17th, 2010

No time for you, no time for me

Interesting week this week. Work was tough, but made it through and ended with a great round of fixes. Things may be a bit off for the next week at work since they are working on the next release and I’m sitting there with bugs and CRs for the current release. But we’ll see. Hopefully, I’ll work with my boss to work on something that continues to challenge me. I really do love where I work, the team I work with and what my job is.

Then there is the wedding planning. RSVPs are coming in but very slowly. This gives me some small amount of panic because if we don’t have a persons rsvp/meal selection, they won’t have food. Even if they decide to come unannounced. There is no extra. I’m not sure how to stress that to people and still be nice about it.

In other wedding news, we got an astronomical quote from our florist. Sadly, I had to chop away at the decoration ideas I had in my head. Gone are the flower balls, reduced are the bridesmaid flowers, the centerpieces will have to be neutered. I’m not sure why this bothers me so. I’m not sure if people care that much about flowers at a wedding, but I guess it’s an overall look. But I know I can’t make us spend so much on flowers. It’s just silly. Hopefully our guests will understand.
Weekend wedding plans involve looking at linens (which are also probably too expensive for me to rent) and printing a few more invitations.

It’s starting to hit me how close the wedding is. The other day I thought of it in terms of how many paychecks are left before the wedding and that depressed me. It’s really difficult to pay for a wedding, and Matt has taken on most of that burden. Unfortunately. I will probably make payments or make it up to him somehow, but it’s frustrating. In terms of time left, it’s stressful that everything has to be done in a month! What am I leaving out? What am I forgetting? Will people even come?

Next in my life is GamingAngels. I’ve set up a couple of business relationships this week that I’m proud of. Our contest with Geek Chic Cosmetics was well received. I have set us up to be a sponsor of a party at SDCC and a media partner of a women and games event. Our PR and CM angels are taking off in their positions and I LOVE the extra help. Our whole staff has been amazing these past couple of weeks. I hope we can keep the momentum going. I’ll be at SDCC next week, but won’t have as many interviews as last year. I guess that’s a good thing, because last year I couldn’t even enjoy SDCC. But it’s a bad thing because that means it will be sooooo crowded that in the end, it might just suck. I also fully believe they let in too many people as press. Because every press conference is warning of being overcrowded and too full. Unless SDCC changes or moves, I believe this will be my last one. It’s just not worth all the frustration. It used to be my favorite con in the world and now I just dread it.

A weird thing happened this week, someone wrote me stating that they are done because I don’t have time for them. At first this made me sad, but then it made me angry. I work all day from 9-7, then come home and work out for an hour, by 9pm I start my work on GamingAngels (while I eat dinner) and do a mixture of that and wedding until 1am. This is my routine every day. I don’t have any extra time to play a video game, watch a movie, or spend time with my future husband. I don’t take time out to just sit or breathe and you know what? I’m okay with that. Right now I have a perfect balancing act for me. It upsets me that someone can’t look at everything I’m doing and understand that I might be completely unavailable at least until the wedding is over. I work my ass off and I do it because I am passionate and love every aspect of what I’m doing now. I have no regrets about how hard I work and I refuse to be guiltily persuaded into feeling bad about it.

Now I’ve already spent too much time here. Have to go and check out linens! woot!

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July 14th, 2010

The joy of RSVPs

I read about it on theknot.com, but I never would have believed that receiving response cards would give you so much joy! The first round of our invites went out last week and it’s sooo exciting to get response cards. I know not everyone will say yes, but so far we have yes results. Also, I was mostly worried that people will let it sit on their counter and that we would have to call them.

The stats are that 10% will say no and maybe up to 20% won’t respond. I can imagine that would drive anyone crazy! Especially since the price of our reception is based on the food people choose!

This weekend is a couple of wedding things and then next weekend is SDCC. I feel like I have a good balance of wedding/GA/life going on right now. But I also feel like July is flying past and I’m just not ready for August/September!!! eeeek! Will I be ready when the day comes?

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July 5th, 2010

2 Months and counting!

It’s two months left as of today. This means that stress is probably going to hit an all time high, but at the same time, I’m getting everything done, so I feel calm. This weekend is my bachelorette party. I even bought outfits for it. I’m working on the flowers right now.

Invitations are almost out in the mail. I was short 24 stamps. Not sure how that happened. But they are all printed, built and ready to go. I’m actually quite impressed. I should probably make sure to keep one for myself.

I have to get a feeling that flowers are set in order to be comfortable. I bought favors and napkins over the weekend. So most everything is ready. I’m so excited! It’s getting so close!!

btw, I’m totally obsessed with The Knot.

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June 30th, 2010

Upgraded

I upgraded this site to 3.0. Testing this out before I upgrade GA. Hopefully it goes well. GA has different theme/modules, so we typically wait longer so that the modules all have a chance to upgrade before we move over. We’ll see.

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June 27th, 2010

Wedding updates

Today I spent most of the day printing my wedding invitations. Yes, I decided to do this part of the wedding myself. The largest reason is the cost savings.

Going to bridal shows, the amount of vendors that make invitations are ridiculous. They almost all have the same look and make it difficult to distinguish between each other. The one thing that they have in common is a really high price tag. I will say that their invitations are beautiful. Various shiny metals, crystals, ribbons and invitations that look like a book.

I determined early on that I would print the invitations myself. This means finding a kit that I loved, wording the invitation myself, and making sure it had the pieces that I wanted in my invitation.

There are many types of Do-it-yourself kits. My favorites are at Michaels. They have the largest selection of different types of invitations so you can find the one that best fits your wedding theme.

The thing about Do-It-Yourself invitations is that they take time. I’m on day one of my invitations and while everything is printed out, I still need another few hours to assemble and then to address them out. But if you are willing to put in the time and effort you can save yourself tons of money.

Wedding invitations I looked at getting made ran around $600 (only for 50 mind you), and that is without assembly. My wedding invites so far are costing me around $90.

I’m impressed and in love with my invitations. It’s allowed me to be creative and I feel like I’m sending something that is from my heart to people that I really want to be a part of the celebration.

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May 23rd, 2010

New look, new attitude

Starting this blog today with a new look and a new attitude. I am trying to do too much. I have my normal 8 to 5 job, GA, and a wedding I’m trying to plan. With the combination of all of these, I’ve realized I’m at the end of my rope. I’m desperately trying to not become a bridezilla, but what I am noticing that all my stress from the other areas of my life is getting focused there.

This is my statement that this will stop today. I will not let all my stress come out at my wedding planning. Yes, there are issues with our planning so far (the florist won’t respond to my emails). But we have a honeymoon planned, we have tuxes now (even though the guys can’t try them on yet) and we have most of our vendors. I am meeting with most of the vendors next week and then we will be meeting with the rest the week after. So things are going well.

GA has a certain level of stress. E3 is coming up. I’m trying to get business cards for my staff that is attending. I am making appointments and also went to some preview shows this week. But most of the GA stress has been from recent turnover. Luckily we’ve been able to get amazing new staff rather quickly, but I’m still trying to observe how I can treat my staff better and get them some things we need to keep them involved and being a part of GA.

Yesterday I went on a bar crawl. While fun, I found myself upset for taking a full day away from all the stuff I have to do. Why do I feel guilt for going out? Don’t I deserve a day off too? This is what I have to start to understand or I’m just going to burn out.

There are so many exciting things on the horizon. I just hope I can stay sane enough to enjoy them! ^_^

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