Christmas for Newleyweds

This was our first Christmas as a married couple.  It was so much fun to be able to call Eric my husband on such an important holiday.  It was the first year we both got to participate in the holiday traditions with each other's families.  While it was very hectic, it was also amazing.  


Our holidays started off with baking cookies with my family.  This was the first time Eric got to help us make our millions of cookies.  We made butter cookies, boiled cookies, Hungarian butterhorns, chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies, reeses cookies, Hershey kiss cookies, snowballs, nutbread, and I think that might be it.  It was very eventful.  He got to watch the SPECIAL way our family makes Christmas cookies...nothing odd about our tradition, we just don't let outsiders watch for good reason.  We didn't get a picture of us actually making the cookies, but here is some of the artwork.

We had to wait until Christmas Eve to eat the cookies, but it was worth it.  Christmas Eve luckily started out bright and early at 8 in the morning.  We got to my parents and got to eat all our goodies.  We then exchanged gifts with the family.  It was a full house this year with many significant others being present.  Yet somehow the 4-5 hour usual gift exchange was only 3 hours.  Not sure how that happened.  It was a lot of fun.  We changed up the order we handed out gifts this year by drawing names out of a hat.  It added another element of surprise to our celebration.  Sadly Eric and I had to give out our gifts last, but I guess they saved the best for last so it was worth it.  :)  There were lots of laughs, lots of AMAZING gifts, and lots of surprised reactions.  

After the gift exchange with our family, we watched Sherlock Holmes, looked at some wedding pictures, then took a nap.  We then got dressed a little more formally and headed to Eric's family's house for their Christmas.  His family does things a little differently.  They don't hand out the presents one at a time and have everyone open one at a time.  Usually, as Eric explained it to me, it's just pure madness.  However, after I explained how my family did it, his family actually decided to change it up a little bit this year.  They decided to hand out the presents to each person and have only one person open all their presents while everyone watched.  I liked it a lot and his family even said they liked it that way.  They enjoyed being able to actually watch everyone's faces as they opened each gift.  I thought it was really sweet that his family took a little of my family tradition into their holiday.


After his family's Christmas, we headed back to my parent's house to get ready for Mass.  This was our first time going to Midnight Mass so we were not sure what to expect.  It ended up being really relaxing and nice.  We were not as tired as we thought we would be.


After Mass we headed BACK to my parent's house where we stayed the night.  It felt so weird to be spending the night with a man in my parent's house.  I honestly felt like I was going to get in trouble and kicked out.  It was very strange and my parents were laughing at me and my hesitation to sleep with my husband under their roof.  I managed to talk my self out of my crazy scenario and let myself try to fall asleep.  After sleeping about three hours we woke up at 5:40 to do Christmas AGAIN.  We went into my sisters room where we all hung out until my parents said it was time to go downstairs.  Then, just like every year, we walked down the stairs where we saw all the presents Santa brought everyone.  Christmas music was playing, cookies and nutbread were set out, and coffee was brewing.  Then, like every year, we went into the living room and sat down by our piles of gifts from Santa and opened all of our goodies.  Later I took a nap and then we all headed out to see Sherlock Holmes 2, since we always try to see a big movie on Christmas Day.


And that was the end of our Christmas.  Our FIRST Christmas as a married couple.  It was a lot of fun, very hectic, and I still haven't caught up on sleep.  But it was worth it and I cannot wait to see how traditions change and how they stay the same throughout our lifetime.

Who Thought This Would be a Good Idea?

When I first got engaged, I thought that planning a wedding in 8 months would be easy-shmeezy.  I mean come on, I LOOOVE throwing parties.  I thrive off planning events.  So when it came to throwing the biggest party of my life, I knew I had it in the bag.  Well, I was on cloud 9 planning the wedding for the first few months.  Yeah it was stressful, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I had NO clue why so many brides complained about wedding planning.  Well about two weeks ago, I got slapped in the face by reality.

The 60 day countdown began.  For any bride that is a stressful time.  60 days is when everything starts being due.  Money, forms, song requests, menu options, guest counts, and the list goes on!  UGH! That's a whole bunch of stuff that I now have to do.  However, it's completely manageable.    All I have to do is find all my paperwork from my millions of vendors and complete it.  It's really not that bad.  So what then is stressing me out so much? I planned a wedding for the week before Christmas...in only 8 months.

Bring on the stress relievers!  In the 60 days before my wedding, there is enough stuff going on to stress out even Martha Stewart.  This is already a stressful time for a bride, but then you add in these:

1. Halloween - not necessarily stressful, but spending money on a costume, thinking of the perfect theme, decorating, going to parties...yeah takes up a lot of time and money
2. Bachelorette party - a frickin awesome time...but requires money again.  And even though it's my party, I'm still stressing out about the plans and how it goes and how to wear my hair, how to do my makeup, what to wear, wondering if my shoes will match my outfit, thinking about whether or not I should bring a camera....LOTS of little things that normally aren't stressful
3. Gettin muh hurr did - Normally I love getting my hair done.  However, the stylist I have gone to for 6 years is moving away. What does that mean? That means I have to get my hair done in early November.  Which means it may not look all that glamorous on my wedding day.  However, going to a new stylist before my wedding is really not an option.  It took me forever to get my hair the way I have it now and I am not risking my hair getting ruined.
4. Thanksgiving - not stressful, but HALLOOOOO! I gotta wear the most important dress of my life less than three weeks after Thanksgiving.  I can't stuff my face like I usually do. That's a sad day for me
5. Rehearsal dinner - I need a final guest count, I need to make sure that the venue is booked, and I need to make sure I have enough dinero for it.  Oh...and I have to be SURE the dress I ordered fits.  
6. The Wedding - AAAAAAAAAAH SSSSSSSSTRESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!
7. Christmas - So I LOVE Christmas.  It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.  However, normally by September I have my Christmas shopping done.  However, due to other things taking precedence, I only have two people done.  Two people out of about 25 people.  That is NOT ok.  
8. Honeymoon - I have absolutely nothing to wear yet for my honeymoon.  I don't own a single pair of shorts, I have swim suits but I would like to get ones I don't mind being seen in public wearing, and I don't own any "hiking through the forest" types of shoes.  Oh...and I am not at my honeymoon weight or honeymoon tan.
9. Moving - Am I moving? Am I not?  This is a big stressor on me right now.

All of those things normally don't stress me out TOO much (ok, I lie, I stress about what color to paint my toes so OF COURSE these things stress me out) but usually the stress I incur is a fun kind of stress.  Not a "will I get this all done and will I be able to do it without selling a kidney" stress.  I know at the end of this year I am going to look back and think about how wonderful everything was.  I'll have pictures to remind me of everything that I did in 2011 and I will have a husband.  But right now, it's hard to not live in the moment and think about everything I still have to do.  So can someone please tell me why nobody told me that this would be a bad idea?

Cakespiration

So it's no surprise to anyone that my wedding is peacock themed.  There is just something about that animal that I love.  And considering that the first gown I ever bought for a formal high school dance was "peacock" colored, I guess having a peacock themed wedding was destined to happen.  

My lovely sister Molly in the dress I wore as a junior in high school

Apparently it was in the stars to have a teal/blue/green wedding.  And the fact that we decided to have a winter wedding just confirmed that these dark colors would be perfect.  While I love the peacock theme, I did not want to go TOO overboard with the theme and make it look like a peacock threw up all over my wedding.  So when it came to my cake, I knew I wanted a 4-5 on the peacock scale.  Here are some of my inspiration pictures that I brought to my vendors.

The only thing I knew for certain was that I wanted the cake to be white.  I liked the idea of having designs on the cake, but I wanted the icing itself to be white and then maybe the detail in other colors.  As of when I did my initial research, the top two photos were my favorites.  I did, however, like certain aspects of the others.


There was a whopping list of two things I did NOT want on my wedding cake.  Fondant and "mad hatter" style.  Other than that, I was open to the designer suggestions.  I just knew I wanted a yummy cake that matched my theme without being "matchy matchy".  Here were some "Hecks-to-the-no's" that I am sure are great for other people, but not me.

Some of those cakes are beautiful and I am sure took a lot of time and talent to make, they're just not me.  I don't want my guests to have green mouths from eating the cake.  That would not make for pretty pictures.

My theme is peacock feather, Christmas, and fun. So I needed to make sure my cake matched that. With all the options out there it sure is easy to get overwhelmed.  My recommendation is to stick true to yourself.  Yes, a different cake may be gorgeous! But as a bride it's your responsibility to stick true to the style of wedding you want.  If I was to do a HUGE elaborate cake, it really wouldn't have matched the rest of the decor in my wedding and would have stuck out like a sore thumb.  

I cannot wait to see the finished design of our cake. I am very confident in the vendor we selected and after looking at about 100 peacock cakes, I feel like the simpler, the better.  The feathers are accessories to the main item, THE CAKE! NOM NOM NOM!