Update

Hey all. So I realize it's been a while since my last post. There are many reasons for this, but the main reason is that nothing has really happened regarding the wedding planning since my last post. We have now exactly 16 months until the wedding and to be honest, there isn't much planning happening these days. We have our venue and our wedding party, and now it's time to relax a little. Plus, I've been ultra-busy at work and now I'm sick (thanks to my lovely fiancee), so that doesn't help. But I'll give a quick update on how things have been going since my last post.

Wedding Party
Technically, this didn't happen since my last post, but I haven't really posted anything on this yet so I will here. We finalized our wedding party about a month ago. After much deliberation, I decided to include my brothers as groomsmen instead of ushers (my other brother is working on getting ordained by his church so he can officiate the ceremony). It expanded the wedding party by one person on each side, but who cares? We have 6 groomsmen and 6 bridesmaids, with 2 ushers. The final wedding party is:

Best Man: Kyle
Groomsmen: Matt (college friend), Joe (brother), Matt (brother), Hicks, and Nick (both college friends who I also went to high school with)
Ushers: Hags and R-Dot

I don't think the wedding party is too big at 6 apiece either. All the guys were excited to be in the wedding, which is good. Beyond asking them and giving them minor details, I haven't contacted them or set up any outings (guys generally don't do that) but I hung out with my best man for the Super Bowl and he said he already had my bachelor party planned. We are planning a wedding party box race as a meet-and-greet for any members that don't know one another. This should be interesting, because my two brothers aren't "of age" yet. So the question is... do I include them in this or not? My one brother is already in college and the other is entering this Fall. I want to include them since it's wedding party-related, but I have a moral dilemma in knowingly letting them participate in drunken debauchery.

Venue
So we put our names down for The Penn Stater in good old State College, PA for July 3, 2010. We liked it enough to at least be put on the "wait list" which really isn't a wait list at all. All you actually wait for is the day when they can officially book the room for you, since they can't book more than a year in advance. Either way, we are excited about the possibilities of a State College wedding with all our friends. We are planning a downtown bar tour on the Thursday before the wedding, with the rehearsal dinner at the Nittany Lion Inn the next day, and the wedding Saturday at the Penn Stater. That Sunday, July 4, there is something called 4th Fest, which we basically discerned as being just fireworks. But hey, who doesn't like fireworks? Also on the 4th will be a brunch at the Penn Stater for anyone that wants to hang around. We are mucho excited and there is a food tasting event coming up sometime in April that we may make the trip up for.

Wedding Bands
We are starting to look at wedding bands at this point. Sezzy wants a channel-set band to match her engagement ring, which makes sense. A channel-set band would look good with the engagement ring. Something like this:
As for me, I'm liking the titanium and tungsten bands. Both are strong metals, but the titanium will scratch, whereas the tungsten will not. I would probably go with the tungsten over titanium in this case because they look very similar and I would want one that didn't scratch. Either way, they are uber-cheap. Here's a titanium band:


And here are four different flavors of tungsten bands:

I don't think I'm crazy about the real dark variety of these bands, but I like the top 3 ones above. They look so cool and there's so many different ways that they can be made. And the best part? All of these rings are under $300, which leaves more money for things like the...

Honeymoon
Initial planning has begun and I think I know where I want to go for the honeymoon, but I will post this separately because I have lots to say about this.

So I guess there were updates to give. I just didn't give much thought to it since we haven't really been focusing on it recently. Our two friends are getting married in May so they are entering the stretch run. The groom's bachelor party is coming up in early May and their wedding is Memorial Day weekend, so we are getting ready for that. Which brought up a funny point... so far, everyone in our circle of friends has been picking holiday weekends to get married. Our one couple got married on Labor Day last year, our other couple is doing Memorial Day this year, and now we are doing July 4 weekend.

Hey, it's easy to remember, ok?