Congratulations Jason!

Tonight is Jason's last class ever and he officially has his MBA! Jason has been taking night classes for two years now and put in endless hours of hard work to get to this point. I'm so proud of all that he has accomplished. Pending the outcome of this last class, Jason has gotten straight A's! My little over achiever;) I know that having his MBA will help Jason to continue building a very successful career and life for us. Can't you tell how excited he is to be done?!

I treated Jason to dinner on Saturday night to celebrate. We decided to try the pizza at Pi, a place in the Loop that is now known for it's pizza thanks to President Obama. Pi has catered for several of the President's trips to St. Louis and were even invited to the White House to prepare dinner for him and his guests. The President has declared it the best pizza he has ever had! I have to agree, it was delicious! We had the deep dish and it was definitely the best I've had. The crust is light and not greasy at all and the ingredients were fresh. I highly recommend it!

It's been a big week for us! Congratulations, Jason! I love you!

Closing Day!

We haven't really mentioned this on the blog yet, but we bought a house!! We found the perfect little house in Brentwood and put an offer on it the first day we saw it. We are happy to be staying in the same area. We have lived in Brentwood for the past two years and really like it. It's such a central location and we can get just about anywhere in St. Louis in 20 minutes or less. We aren't moving far from where we are now - 1.1 miles to be exact!

The house itself is perfect for us. It's an all brick ranch style house built in 1955. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, a finished basement and an awesome back patio and yard. Just right for a starter home. It's on a quiet cul-de-sac street and the neighbors that we have met seem very nice. The older man across the street filled us in on who lived in each of the houses and when he came to the house next door he said his daughter lived there. She literally moved out of his house and across the street! That has to say something good about the neighborhood. I only have a couple of pictures that I took during our final walk throught last night. The house was covered in boxes so I didn't take too many. More to come though!
Front of the house:

The back of the house and deck:

The kitchen:

So today was the big day. We closed on the house and are now officially homeowners! Jason and I were both very anxious and a little nervous as we headed to the title company for the closing. We both felt a little sick to our stomachs at the thought spending our life savings and now being in debt for the rest of our lives! But once we got there and started signing the papers all the nerves went away and we were just so happy and excited!

A big thanks to Jason's Aunt Cathy who was our agent. She made the whole process so fun and easy and we couldn't imagine working with anyone else! Thanks Cathy!!

We are planning to start moving some things this weekend and then move all the big stuff next Friday, July 3rd since Jason and I both have the day off. We can't wait to get settled in our new home!

Shoes!

In my opinion a girl can never have too many shoes. Just ask Jason. My closet is full with more pairs than I can count! Last month I orderd a pair of ivory satin shoes for the wedding from J Crew. They were really nice but unfortunately they were a bit too big. The curse of having small feet! I ordered a second pair, but this time decided to spice it up a bit and go for a pink pair. I've been comtemplating colored shoes for the wedding for a while. I think it looks really cute and adds a pop to a white dress. They also make for some really cute pictures. I found and ordered a pair and they were super cute shoes, but not quite the right shade of pink that I was looking for. So, I had to say good bye to these two pairs of pretty shoes :(






Back to square one in my search for the perfect pair of wedding shoes. Then I found these. Just the right shade of pink and available in my size.


They should be delivered today! Fingers crossed that they fit!

Bridezilla

I am ashamed to admit that I think I have had my first (and hopefully last!) bridezilla freak out. Now that we are getting close (3 months today!) I think I'm just starting to get nervous about having everything done on time. So, what was my bridezilla moment? I fired one of my vendors! Seriously, who am I?

Here's the story. Back in October I found a lady out of California that I contracted to do our invitations. I found her on a wedding website and figured she must be reputable. She did custom designs and her prices were unbeatable. I was really excited to work with her. In January, I contacted her for a timeline so I knew when I could expect to see some designs. She let me know that she would have 4 designs for us to choose from by mid May. Well, mid may came and went and I hadn't received anything. I am a very literal person. If you tell me mid May, then I fully expect mid May. I gave her another week and still nothing. So I emailed her asking when I could expect to see something. She apologized explaining that it's busy season and they were a couple weeks behind and she'd send my designs that week. Ok, fine. I finally got the 4 design concepts at the very end of the week, the end of May.

I was happy with the 4 concepts she designed and we chose one, but wanted her to make a couple of revisions. According to the timeline she had given me this process of finalizing a concept should take no longer than a week. A week came and went and I didn't hear from her. At this point I was really frustrated. It is one of my biggest pet peeves when people do not respond to emails. Especially with something like this! I didn't even know if she received my revisions. Finally she emailed me back and said sorry again for the delay, but she'd been out of the office due to moving. Alright, lady. Enough with the excuses. I know it's busy season and you obviously have too much on your plate, but in my opinion it's very unproffesional to miss deadlines that you have set and just kind of blow it off. I felt like this was not a priority to her. She swore she would have the final revision to me that night or the next morning. Which would have been this past Monday morning at the latest. Guess what? 2 days later still nothing!

So call me crazy, call me bridezilla, but I just had enough and was getting worried that I wouldn't have enough time to get the invitations to our caligrapher and then sent out on time. So I fired her. I let her know that I was dissapointed in her customer service, lack of responsiveness, and failure to meet deadlines. She responded saying we were still ahead of the game and they had a fast print turnaround. That's all good and great, but doesn't change the fact that she was not meeting the deadlines that she set for my particular project. She refunded part of the deposit and that was that.

I do feel bad about it and maybe I overreacted a bit. But I just found her service unacceptable. Luckily, Jason's co-worker and friend, Courtney, is going to take over designing and printing our invitaions. She did our Save the Dates so I know she will do a great job and I'm excited to work with her. I'm a lot more comfortable and confident in her and it helps that she's here in St. Louis. We are meeting Monday to go over things. She is awesome for taking this on last minute!

So, lesson learned. Don't hire a vendor off the internet that you really know nothing about and lives across the country. My dad tried to warn me about this, but of course I didn't listen and now I'm hearing the "I told you so." You were right, Dad. I admit it ;)

100 days...

...til we finally get married! I'm so ready for the big day to be here!

Flowers

My mom and I met with Susie, our florist, on Sunday to sit down and decide on a floral scheme. Susie is actually the Aunt of my friend and bridesmaid, Emily, and she works for a florist here in St. Louis. We have known Susie for a long time and she did the flowers for my sisters wedding. She is very creative and does beautiful work so I know working with her will be great! Unlike some of the other details of the wedding, I actually had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to it was a really easy, fun process. We decided on hot pink roses, green cymbidium orchids, and lime green hydrangeas! My bouquet will be all hot pink roses with green hypericum berries around the edge and wrapped in ivory satin ribbon. My mom is letting me borrow the rosary that she got for her confirmation and it will be wrapped into the bouquet and hang down the front. It's beautiful and I'm so glad we thought of using it! So it will look something like this.

The girls' bouquets will have lime green hydrangeas, the orchids and hot pink roses. Something similar to this only with roses instead of peonies.

I think the pink and green will really pop against the girls' darker dresses.

Speaking of the bridesmaids dresses, they came in yesterday! They were deliverd to my mom's house and everything looks great. One of my BM's, Emily came over and tried hers on and she looked beautiful. I can't wait to see all the girls in their dresses! Just over 3 months to go!

How Sweet is My Fiance?!

Jason sent me the cutest e-card at work today:

"We've been so busy lately that it feels like we haven't had much quality time together. And with another busy weekend ahead of us I think we could use some time for just us. I'd like to take you on a date tonight."

I pretty much melted :) It's things like this that remind me how happy and excited I am to be marrying Jason in 3 1/2 months! No matter how busy and crazy our lives get he always makes time for just us. I can't wait for our sushi date tonight!