Photo Preview

Our photographers have posted a preview of a few of the photos from our wedding day on their blog.  Please visit Mr. Stacey to see these pictures from our day.  We could not be more excited with how these have turned out and we cannot wait to see the rest!

Rehearsal Dinner Venue Selection

After some initial disappointments in finding a rehearsal dinner location, we finally committed to a restaurant (not a moment too soon, eh?).  The restaurant has three different locations, one of which was the location for my sister's wedding reception.  The dinner will be at Pazzo's Cucina Italiana at the corner of Adams & Wacker looking out onto the Chicago River!

Of course I am looking forward to enjoying the evening with our families and our wedding party, as well as the great location, but I'd be lying if I wasn't also really looking forward to the food.  Pasta station...here I come!

A great big thanks to my parents for scouting the location and hosting the event!

A (long) Overall Update

So my wish to catch up on all past blogs a couple weeks ago did not quite work as I had hoped.  I was able to post a few, but shortly after, I was right back to my to do list and our website (unfortunately) was not my top priority.  I'll try to just abridge some things so that you don't get too bored reading this.

1. About a month ago, I was able to finalize the entire flower order.  We decided to start with Del's Florist, which is the flower shop that our church regularly uses, and although I was not able to make an appointment because they were closed the day I call, the woman at the shop was gracious enough to meet with us anyway when we just showed up one day.  We told her we did not live near by and we were completely fine if she had to help anyone if they came in to the shop, so I think that because we were polite and understanding, she was understanding of us as well and helped us right then and there.  I brought tons of pictures of flowers that I liked from magazines, but unlike when I collected pictures of bridal gowns, there was not a strong common theme amongst what I liked.  Thankfully, the woman was extremely nice and would give me much more information when I asked for it since I don't know much about flowers.  I generally knew what colors I wanted though and between her suggestions and input from my parents, I think we picked some great arrangements.  At least for the flowers, it was one-stop shopping!  I am anxious to see how they will turn out, although I am sure they will be great. 
 
2. I finalized all the pieces to the gifts for my bridesmaids.  I can't say much more here since I know at least one of them reads the blog regularly, but I am glad to have everything for those and I am excited to give them their gifts.
 
3. I had to send in our first "final payment" for the wedding last week.  With each thing that I check off my list, I realize it brings us that much closer to our big day.  But there is something about getting into the "final payment" stage that makes me see that it is not that far away any more.  In fact, we only have a few weeks!
 
4. In and amongst all of our planning, we were able to celebrate my grandparents' 67th wedding anniversary.  That's right, you read that correctly - 67 years!  And although they have their aches and pains just like any person does as they age, they both are so grateful to have one another through all these years.  It was a great moment for my family and I to be with them to celebrate and for Jack and I of course, a great reminder as to what unconditional love is as we prepare for our wedding day.
 
5. As Jack has noted in his recent blogs, much of what has been taking up our time is closing on our condo and all of our packing.  When it came to handling condo details, I pretty much left it all to Jack.  He certainly has done so much with our wedding plans, but now that we are heading into the final stretch, we are down to a lot of the little details that all along I just knew I would handle.  So, with that in mind, he took the ball and ran with it in finalizing our condo closing, setting up appointments with the floor refinishers, the people to come and clean the place before we move in, our insurance agent, the movers, etc.  He has just been an ENORMOUS help with all of this!  And one of the great things with Jack is that he didn't leave me in the dust to not know what was going on.  He'd keep me posted with where we were at with things, ask me my opinions and then go from there.  I am just so lucky to have a partner helping with all this!
 
I am long overdue in posting about the Minster shower, so I will be sure to get to that this week, as it was a fantastic afternoon that is worthy of its own blog.

Engagement Photo Session

This actually happened over a month ago, but better late than never right!  The photography package we selected for our wedding included a complimentary engagement photo session.  Mary and I weren't planning on purchasing this, but since it was at no cost to us, we figured we'd take advantage.  Our photographers made a good case for it as well.  They said that the purpose of the session was for us to "warm up" to having our pictures taken a lot and be the center of attention.  This proved to be a really good idea.

Although we did warm up a little towards the end, there was definitely a feeling of, "what are we supposed to do?"  Most of the time, when someone is taking your picture you look directly at the camera and smile, right?  Well that's not the case for wedding pictures.  Not that we expected it to be, but actually having to act candid was quite a challenge.  Of course, on our wedding day, we'll be so pre-occupied with guests and such that I'm sure we'll hardly even notice the photographer.

Some of the pictures didn't come out to be our favorites, but we did really like a lot of them.  It ended up being a great experience to get to work with our photographers ahead of time.  We're also planning on purchasing several of the photos from our engagement session as well.  I'm sure that only our parents and maybe siblings will be interested, but we'd be happy to let anyone view them online.

For security reasons, I'm not going to post the address to the gallery online, but just send us a message on our contact page, and I'll happily send you the link!

Hotel Reservations

We probably should have indicated this sooner, but the deadline to book a room at our discounted group rate was yesterday (Friday August 29th).  If you still need a room, just let us know ASAP!!