Bride Maid Dress Idea

Here is one idea for the dresses that Bethany was looking at today. Blue, nice and simple. Plus its on sale! We'll see, probably sold out, but doesn't look too bad, does it?
Here's the Link:
http://www.jcrew.com/catalog/product.jhtml?id=prod63100827&catId=cat63429

We were thinking of the lighter of the two blues.
Jimmy

Let Them Eat Cake

What's a reception without any food? A sucky reception. But what to serve is the big question.
We experienced plenty of weddings this summer, and snacked on the usual reception fare: mini quiche, cold cuts, veggie tray etc. But why not do something completely different? Right now we're stuck between two ideas 1) KC fabulous BBQ and other dinner foods (evening wedding, of course) or 2) Dessert bar and finger foods (perhaps bump the wedding back to afternoon-ish).

Only one thing is for certain, for our wedding cake we don't want the traditional styrofoam and sugar concoction, we want delicious, lip-smacking cheesecake! Why not clog your arteries with scrumptious delicacies, instead of wasting precious space on stale cake?
-Bethany

Music, Musak, Musick

So the music played at the ceremony and at the reception is a big deal.
So far, we've gotten Tom, one of our best men (yes, we have two!) to be the DJ kind of guy for the reception. But, what I see happening is we bring Bethany's iBook and play random songs from our growing collection.
But I just recently bought a 4th generation iPod which I am determined to use to its full extent. So now I think we could pull together a smart playlist, load it up on the ipod, and just plug the ipod into the sound system. Then we'd just shuffle the playlist, sit back and enjoy the music.
This would allow Tom even more freedom, and we would just have to keep an eye on the ipod to make sure nobody snagged it during a song change.(Not that I don't trust each and every guest at our wedding... )

One thing that troubles me about this plan is that I'm not so certain that the PA system at the reception hall would plug into a mini-headphone jack, in fact it would seem as if we would need to plug something into the PA system. hmmmm, maybe I can find a converter.
Jim

Dressing Up

One of the many many discussions to be made for this ceremony is what everyone will wear. The gowns and other costumes worn by the wedding participants will hopefully not be a huge expense of time, money, or effort for anyone. Attendants at The Vallandingham wedding will be free to pick their own outfits, providing that they fit the small ruleset developed by Bethany and I. For the bride ladies, as long as its a non-clashing version of blue, and it doesn't look like you just came from the local Harley bar, it should be fine. For the guys, really any black suit/tux will due. Heck, I'm wearing my prom tux (hope that's not too tacky) and so I could hardly impose a very strict dress code on anyone else. I'm still working on the idea of everyone wearing sandals to the wedding. Surprisingly, Bethany seemed ok with the idea, it was my no-fun groomsmen who did the grumbling. Sandals are just much more freeing then dress shoes (plus then I'd have to go buy some decent Church shoes finally, and I've held off so long, it would really be a shame.)
Jimmy

This is the plan of attack for our trip. Bethany has color coded each leg of our trip for your benifit. we'll explain it all later, but for now you can see the magnitude of our adventure

The Status thus Far:

So, with 9 months to go, what have we to prove we're getting married? Well, believe it or not, us slackers have been getting somethings done... We have a reception hall, which is the Lansing community center (also the Lansing police department and the Lansing chamber of commerce). What it lacks in grandness and volume it makes up in price. That is to say its basically free, thanks to a member of Bethany's church, currently residing in Lansing, who's address we were fortunate enough to use.
We have also secured the place of the ceramony itself, no big surprise there, its Bethany's Church! So no big expense there either.
Both of these will give us a bit more monetary goodness that we can use in Europe.

But not everything in life is free of course,
We are employing the expertise of Denise Hilt, a friend from my (Jimmys) church who will help us with the flower arrangements and such.
As far as refreshments, our plan at the moment is to purchase a large quantity of smoked and sliced cow parts. This will be complimented with a large selection of BBQ sauces in a showing of not only our personal tastes, but of our heritage as kansas city natives -- world headquarters of good BBQ. But we have not yet gone through with finding a vendor for this yet.

We also have our wedding apparel, for the most part. Bethany will be wearing a strapless, white, A-line gown. Jimmy will have the traditional tux, which he purchased for our senior prom (yes, we have been dating for a looooong time!)

Before the new beginning

Here begins our blogging experience. We will be married June 25, 2005 and then spend a month touring cities in Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy (barring the possibility that Bush is reelected and we are bombed back to the Land Before Time). But this is the pregame show. Before the honeymoon, there must be a wedding and before a wedding, there must be Months and Months of planning, and worrying. And here (hopefully) it is, in all of its glory.