Our Three State Honeymoon: Wisconsin

When we left off, we were all packed up and ready to leave Illinois.

Want to know where we were headed?!  We decided to go up to Wisconsin Dells for a few days and then head over to our campground for Memorial Day weekend and camp with some family and friends.  We found a great deal online for The Polynesian Hotel where we could stay for $49.99/night for any size room since it was during the weekday and the off season.  (Their normal season didn't start until that weekend.)  We picked the queen size bed with a whirlpool tub.  We should have just picked the king size bed because we didn't even turn on the water in the tub.  And I was a really bad blogger, and forget to take pictures of this hotel as well.  It was actually really nice.  It had a separate little room when you first walked in with a couch and table and chairs and a TV and then it walked through a little hallway with the bathroom off to the side and into the bedroom with the whirpool, bed, dresser, and TV stand.  We even had a door that walked out to a patio set by the pool.

By the time we got there on Monday night all we were ready for was some dinner and then bed.  We ate at Famous Dave's, took a dip in the pool, and then headed to bed.
Tuesday morning we got up and wandered into town to find some breakfast and then we walked up and down the strip wandering in and out of some stores.  Now, I don't know if it's just me, but it seems WAY less cool than when I was there years ago.  I don't if it's because I was a little kid, or if it was because it was still the off season.  But there weren't any people, and a lot of the shops and attractions weren't open yet.  So we went back to the hotel to see if we could check out early.  They said since it was past check out time, that we would have to keep our room for the night.  So we decided to make the most of it. 

First we went and took a Jet Boat tour on the Upper Dells.  We got on a big boat with bench seats and took a tour of the river.  This boat was basically a large jetski and it could stop on a dime, and spin a complete circle in place.  It was a lot of fun, and a little wet!

Waiting in line to get our tickets.

Mr. T after the first spraying on the boat.

I don't remember what this was called, but it's the last place the sun hits when it's setting at the end of the day.  I guess they take sunset dinner cruises out to that spot.

Our pretty wedding bands!

Then we headed over to the other side of the Dells and took a Ducks Boat Tour.  This was the one thing that Mr. T really wanted to do, because he remembered doing it when he was younger.  I believe it was a 7 mile ride, that went through trails and into the river and back out again.  Our tour guide was pretty funny too, so that didn't hurt!

You'd think by now that I'd know how to take some relevant pictures, seeing as how I've been blogging for over a year.  Like maybe one of us with the Duck, or something like that.  We did have some nice pictures taken of us by the photographer at each place, but they wanted to sell it to us for like $30 bucks and that definitely wasn't happening!

Then we went back to our room and got all done up to go out to dinner.  We saw a sign outside a Mexican restaurant for 1/2 price margaritas on Tuesdays, so that was our plan.

We have to have at least one kissing picture right?! It's our honeymoon =]

Delicious margaritas...we got a pitcher!

We got guacamole as an appetizer, and they actually brought out all of the ingredients to the table and made it to your specifications.  We made the most delicious recipe, and we've been replicating it at home quite frequently.  We used avocados, tomatoes, minced garlic, lime juice, salt, and cilantro.  It was AMAZING!

After dinner we went back to the hotel and headed down to the pool for awhile.  We wanted to get in the hot tub, but had to deal with two kids making out like they were never going to see each other again.  They looked like they were maybe 15.  It was gross.  I told Mr. T we should just hop in there next to them and give them a taste of their own medicine.  Instead we just sat in the pool talking loud enough for them to hear about how gross it was.  They got up soon enough and left.

Then we went back to the room and plotted out our plans for our impromptu next stop.  Find out where we went tomorrow!

Hi there friends!  Rayan - the Frugal Designer here to tell you that your Blogger has been kidnapped...by me!  Not to worry, it's only temporary, I promise to return them shortly and in one piece!  I hope you will come visit them over at my site, I know they would love to see you all and I would be honored to have you as well!  See you soon..Xx Rayan!


In case you didn't get that....I'm guest blogging over there! So hop on over there and take a look!  

Our Three State Honeymoon: Illinois

I hope you're all ready to join me on our journey through our honeymoon week!  It's quite an adventure, and it has some surprising news at the end, so stay tuned!

We really didn't know where we wanted to go or how much money we wanted to spend, so we didn't have anything booked until after the wedding.  At first I was 100% about spending a bunch of money and going down south and out of the country and enjoying a week somewhere all-inclusive and just enjoying our newlywed bliss.  Mr. T wasn't having that.  Then as the year went on, he was starting to turn towards the idea, and I was slowly turning away after thinking about what we could do with the money instead.  Then we both didn't want to.  And right at the end, I really wanted to again!  So as you can see, it was a little bit of a mess.

At the end of the wedding night, we stayed in a nice hotel room near the reception hall and enjoyed our massive king sized suite.  Here's the only picture I have from the night.

My handsome husband!

The next morning we got up and had breakfast with his family that was staying in the hotel and then we headed over to pack up the reception hall.  Then it was out to my parents' house for a nice catered brunch with anyone that was still in town. (Unfortunately there aren't any pictures from here either.)  Our pool was open and a little chilly, but we sat around the edge with our toes in the water, and a few brave souls jumped in!  It was really hot that day.
So we ate and we enjoyed our families some more, and then we opened presents!!  We opened all the gifts, and then took the envelopes to open later at the hotel.  We decided to stay in town for one more night so we could get everything packed up in the morning and head out.  We got back and relaxed in bed and opened up all of the cards that were in the cardbox.  It probably took a good hour to get through them all and read what everyone wrote.  It wasn't until Sunday night that we decided where to stay, and even then, nothing was booked until Monday morning!

We got up Monday morning and Mr. T headed out to his parents' house to take care of stuff, and I went and got my hair cut!  Then we packed up the truck and made our way to our next destination.

Stay tuned to find out where state number two took us!

PWC: Everybody's Doing It!

I feel like I've been keeping a huge secret from all of you.  You see, there's something kind of big I haven't told you.  And I've been holding back for three weeks now!
I was really hoping to get my camera charger so I could show you a couple of relevant pictures...but I guess these taken from my computer will have to do.

I chopped off all my hair!!

I made an appointment for Monday morning right after the wedding and had it all taken off before we left for our honeymoon.  I realized during the wedding, when my hair was down and it was so hot, that I was never going to make it through the summer with all of that hair.
So I sat down in the chair and I told her I wanted it all gone.  And as she was cutting, I wasn't even nervous! I think I was looking forward to that day for quite awhile =]

Hopefully soon I'll have my charger so I can show you some more cute pictures, and recap my honeymoon as well!

4 Things I Treasure About Mr. T

I found this on my computer while I was clearing things out just now.  I was supposed to email it to our pastor before our ceremony, but never quite got to it!  Oops.

So I'll share it with you.

He is willing to do ANYTHING to make sure that I am happy.
He plans on providing for me and our future family, and wants me to be a stay at home mom. (yay!)
His morals and family values that his parents instilled in him at a young age.
Just the simple fact that I get to keep him forever.

Happily After All: Honoring Our Family

As I've said a couple of times before, it was really important to me to honor our family members that have gotten married before us.  They've provided such a positive picture of what family and marriage should be like.
I showed you what I did with all of the pictures I gathered in the post about decorating, but I wanted to post each picture individually, because some of them are really old and fun to look at!

Edited to include: A few of you have asked how I pulled this off and was able to get every single family members' picture.  Well, I already had everyone's address for the invitation, so I just sent a letter to each wife asking for a picture from their wedding day for a special project I was working on.  I let them know they could either mail it to me, or email it if it was on their computer. (So I included my email and my address.)  I asked if I could keep the picture or if I needed to return it afterwards. 
So slowly, they all started trickling in.  I only had to remind a couple of people to send them my way.

We'll start with Mr. T's family.

Josh's Mom and Dad

His maternal grandparents.  His grandpa was in WWII and now they live on a gorgeous 300+ acre farm.  They had five kids, one of whom is Josh's mom.

His mom's brother and wife.  They have three kids, one of which is married with two kids, and one who is getting married in October!

The married daughter, Josh's cousin.

His mom's other brother and wife.

His mom's sister and husband.  Does he not look exactly like Tom Cruise?!!  They also have two married daughters and a younger son.

Here is their oldest who is expecting their first baby any day now!

And their other daughter who just left with her husband for two years in the Peace Corps in Fiji.

Here's another of Josh's cousins who was recently married.  They now have an adorable little girl.

And onto his dad's side of the family:

His paternal grandparents.  They also had five children, one of which was obviously Josh's dad.

His dad's sister and husband.  They have two girls.

His other aunt and her husband.  They have two boys.

All but a couple of these people live right here in MN within 45 minutes in any direction of us.  It's so nice having family so close, because I didn't have that with my family when I was growing up.

And now for my family.

My parents.

My maternal grandparents (my late grandpa).  My mom's parents had five kids, three of which are married, one that was married, and one that hasn't been yet.

My aunt and her husband.  They have three girls, one who is married with a little baby, and another who is getting married this month!

Their married oldest.

My mom's youngest sister and her husband.

And now my dad's side:

My dad's parents.  They only had three kids, all of whom are married with children.  I'm the first on this side to get married.

My dad's sister, the oldest.

My dad's brother, and his wife.

So there you have it.  All of our important family wedding pictures.  Hopefully some of the pictures provided a little humor for you.  I just wish I would have gotten all of their wedding dates while I was collecting pictures.  That might be another project!

Happily After All: Decorating the Reception Hall

Well...here it is! My first official recap from my wedding! I still don't have my pro pics back yet, but she emailed me yesterday to say that she would hopefully be done by the end of the week.  But I don't really need them for these next two, so I figured I'd get started.

You all know how I spent my Thursday night before the wedding.  I was up until about 4:30am working on my programs.  After just a couple of hours of sleep, I had to get up to go and decorate the Country Club.  A long, long time ago, we decided that my boss, and two of the girls I used to work with were going to decorate for me.  I helped out at one of the girl's wedding a couple of years ago, and they've done so many they could probably do it in their sleep.  So the original plan was that they were going to get up early on Saturday morning and decorate, and then I wouldn't have to worry about a thing.  Well if you know me...! haha you know that I can't just hand over control that easily.  But it worked out because the CC was open all day Friday and we could get in early to set up.  So we planned on meeting out there at 9:30am.

So that morning there happened to be about 5 guys floating around my house so I had them do all the heavy work of loading my piles and piles of stuff into the truck to take into town.  Then I was off!  I pulled into the circle drive of the CC and started unloading everything.  I managed to fill up the entire back of the truck, plus some.
I met up with Tricia, the girl in charge of everything to see how things were going.  I was told that all of the tables and chairs and linens would be set up to my preference before we got there.  And for the most part they were.  But the tables weren't really set up how I had shown her, and already made my chart.  They were incredibly crowded and a couple were on top of the bars in the corner so that definitely wasn't going to work.  She brought in some people to move it all around, and she was surprised herself at how well it fit afterwards.  She said she was going to show it to her workers as how it should be set up with large numbers in the future.  (Yay me!)

Then we sort of just went at things systematically.  Jane and Rose worked on all of the tulle and lighting around the head tables, gift tables, DJ table, front entrance table, cake table, and refreshments table.  So the majority of the time we were there, that's what they were busy with.
Oh and in case I forget to mention it... we were there for SIX HOURS!! It took way longer than I thought it would, but it turned out perfectly!
While they were doing all of that I was busy getting all the tables set with table squares, centerpieces, votives, place settings, table cards, favors, etc.  At that point, I was also pulling all the extra chairs and settings that she had put at each table.  For some reason she set every table with 10 people, even though I had told her specifically how many were at each table.
Remember this?

So that was a lot of unnecessary time and effort, but oh well!

I suppose you'd like to see some pictures now, instead of just reading me rambling on.  I'll take you through the tour!

Here is our card box and gift table.  You can catch a glimpse of the tulle and lights at the bottom of the picture.  The room looked AMAZING all lit up at night.  Just wait for the real pictures later...you'll see!

The refreshments table.  These are the awesome drink holders I got for my bridal shower.  I actually only got one, but I went out and bought two more.  They were filled with lemonade and fresh lemons, iced  tea, and water.  This way people could grab some drinks without waiting in line at the bar.  In case anyone is wondering, they're here for $29.99

Here's my fun little set up at each bar.  The mints are in vases from my shower, and then of course the coasters, napkins, drink stirrers, and some fun green straws I found at Easter time.  The coasters hardly got any use at our wedding for whatever reason.  But the drink stirrers, that's another story.  My cousin's fiance kept one in his pocket for each drink he drank.  He worked up quite the collection that night =]

Here's our cake table out in the middle of the floor, minus the cake.  This was the only table with tulle that didn't have lights.  There wasn't an outlet on the dance floor, so we just put a lot of votives and a couple pillars on this table.  And the cute white letters from work! They were full of green candies later on.

Here is the seating chart and table map in the front entrance hall.  My table map is another last minute addition.  I think I worked on this Thursday night as well.  I figured with there being so many tables, it would be easier for people to see where they were going.

This table sat right across from the seating chart and map in the front entrance.  To the left of this, there were two more tables that eventually held the seating card/favors.  I'm hoping the photographer got a picture, because those didn't go out until Saturday so they wouldn't melt.  But on this table, I have pictures of all our family members on their wedding day.  If you look close enough, you'll see they aren't all full yet.  I still had a couple to pick up from the store.

Here's a rough idea of what our head table looked like.  I say that, because there were additions made on Saturday that really topped it off.  But I'll point out some things of note.  On the tulle and lights, we used some of my pew bows at the top points of the swagging.  We also used six bouquet holders spaced along so that our bouquets could add color to the front of the table and we wouldn't have vases in our faces.  I got those from Hobby Lobby in the bridal section.  I found a place for the Mr. and Mrs. sign project that I initially thought would hang on our chairs.
What you don't see there yet, is the large banner that hung behind us on the wall and cute green bows that Jane added to each chair when she ran back out there Saturday morning.  You might be able to catch a glimpse in the bottom picture of the wine glasses and beer mugs at each place setting.  Those were a big hit.

Moving on to the tables! I had them put out pre-folded black napkins at each spot.  You can see the green table squares, photobooth favors, table number, centerpiece, votives,  seating card, and photo request card.
Here's a close-up of each table setting.

And a close up of the candle centerpiece:

And one of the flower centerpieces, minus the flowers (those were delivered Saturday morning):

All of the table to the right:

I can't wait for you to see the pictures from the actual reception! It was so gorgeous.

Here's a rough idea of the kids' area.  I went back on Saturday morning and added a green vinyl tablecloth so crayons wouldn't get on the white linens.  And there were also crayons and glow sticks and fun stuff on the table as well.  In the first picture you can see a close up of the ribbon topiary, and in the last you can see that there is a large open space in the corner for them to run around in or lay down in towards the end of the night.  I picked up all of the games from Goodwill for about $10 the week of the wedding.

Here is my boss's project right next to the gift table.  She worked on all of the letters for a couple months before the wedding.  T is for "Tischer" and has our engagement picture.  I is for "Illini" for our college mascot and has a picture of Mr. T in his football uniform and me in my cheerleading uniform.  S is just decorated cute.  C is for "Chief" and has pictures of our baby.  H has our wedding date and E is cute.  R is for "Redskins" our high school mascot and has again, football and cheerleading pictures on it.

Here's another picture after decorating, that got the gorgeous tented ceiling and chandeliers in it.

And I think that's about it!  It probably took you forever to read though, and that's about how I felt setting it all up! But I really enjoyed doing it all.  I'm really hoping my photographer got a bunch of detail shots.  I asked her about it, and she said she did, so fingers crossed!

Next up: how the rest of the day went and our rehearsal and dinner!