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!

Anyone still read this?

In case by chance anyone is still checking in to our blog, I thought I would post something since it has been far too long since I was able to do so.  The final weeks of wedding preparations took over and our blog was, unfortunately, the last thing on my mind.  I know many of our friends and family kept up with our plans through our posts, but I just couldn't keep up by the end.  Thankfully, Jack seems to balance an awful lot really well, so I am glad he kept the blog going while I was entrenched in the details.

In the end though, it all paid off.  We had a truly amazing wedding weekend!  The weather was fantastic, all of our family and friends got to and from Chicago safely (as far as I have heard), my brother was out of the hospital from his lung surgery that week in time to still be with us all day and it seemed all my nitty-gritty planning worked because our day went without a hitch!  Jack and I were so overwhelmed and excited to have our family and friends with us on this day. (And thanks to those that stuck around - you turned a great day into a great weekend)! 

And although it is the guests' duty to say nice things and extend congratulations to the bride and groom, I truly felt like I was in a room packed that people that could not be more genuinely excited for Jack and me.  I don't know that I could put into words what that felt like exactly, except to say that I felt surrounded by love and support.

I told Jack that now that the wedding is over, I want to keep blogging, so we are going to figure out a place for us to continue to post as we begin our married lives together.  If you do still check this, add a comment to let us know so that we can be sure to send a link to our new blogging spot (once we figure that out).  Until then, I'll try to keep posting here for a while.

Ceremony Programs

Mary and I had kind of been stressing a little about the ceremony programs.  Originally, we were going to do them ourselves, but since time is becoming rather limited in the homestretch, we opted to seek help.

My Mom has agreed to take on this challenge and enlisted the help of my sisters.  My Mom really hit the ground running, too!  I mentioned it to her last Friday night, and the next day she had bought samples of paper, artwork, designs and the like for us (mostly Mary) to look at.  We are just providing some creative insight and the copy for the programs, and they'll be handling the rest!

Not only is it one less thing to stress about, but after seeing both my sisters' programs and the rehearsal dinner invitations, I'm really excited to see the final product!

Rehearsal Dinner Invitations

By now, everyone in the wedding party should have received an invitation to the rehearsal dinner to be held at Pazzo's.  The rehearsal will be at St. John Cantius at 7:30pm on Friday 9/26.  Don't be late!  Immediately following the rehearsal, we'll be going straight to Pazzo's.  If you have any questions or feel you have mistakenly not received an invitation, please let us know right away!

A Little More Bling

Needless to say, I have been slacking on my blog posts lately.  We have gotten so much done lately, that it has been hard to keep up with writing about everything, but I hope to post a bunch of new things in the coming week.  To start, about two weeks ago, Jack and I accomplished one very important task - we finally picked our wedding bands.  We had shopped around at a couple different stores and although it seemed like Jack could find a ring he liked at just about every place we went, I never loved any of the rings I was seeing for me. 

I should start by saying, I originally thought about just getting a plain white gold band.  However, when I tried one on at the first store we went to, it got completely lost behind the higher setting of my engagement ring.  Now don't get me wrong, I love my engagement ring, but the wedding band is the "important" one.  It is a gift we give to one another on our first day as husband and wife; it is a symbol of the commitment we will make that day.  The last thing I want is for the symbol of our marriage to be hard to see.  So then I started to look at rings with diamonds part of the way around the band in different settings.  It seemed that at all the stores we visited, they all showed me the same 2 or 3 settings.  After visiting 6 other shops, we finally ended up back at the jeweler where Jack bought my engagement ring.  What a different experience!  Instead of showing me one ring at a time, they took out a number of trays full of rings and told me to take my time and look at as many as I liked.  The woman who helped us pick out our rings and complete the order was really helpful and definitely knew what she was doing.  She was quick to say also that if there is a setting that you like but the size of the stones was not right, that they custom make each ring, so whatever we saw could be adapted to what we want.  After trying out a number of rings, I finally put one on that I got really excited about.  It did not get lost behind my engagement ring and it looked great on its own or with my ring.  It was not what I expected to pick, but I love it and Jack said that he liked the way it looked with my ring too.  I can't wait to get to wear it!

After picking mine, we moved on to look at men's rings.  Jack decided he wanted white gold too so that we would have rings made out of the same material.  After trying on a few different styles, he found a ring he really liked as well.  After taking a quick break to go outside the shop to discuss all this, we went back in and placed the order.  I can see why Jack felt comfortable at this jeweler when picking my engagement ring.  We both felt really good about our choices and felt very relieved to check this important item off our list.