The Mediterranean - The cheap version

In my continued search for the perfect, memorable, budget friendly honeymoon and my refusal to postpone the trip for a latter date I began looking for other options that would give us culture, beach, sun, relaxation and great sightseeing.

I kept noticing how on several Mediterranean cruises there was always a stop in Split, Croatia, which got me thinking that there must be something to this port if everyone wants to go there. Then this morning I was browsing through the newest issue of Utterly Engaged and there was a profile of a couple who took their honeymoon in Croatia and Italy. I had to know more. I started doing some digging and for the last 2 hours I have been researching flights, hotels and sights within Croatia and I have to say I WANT TO GO!!! Croatia has a perfect mix of culture and relaxation. There are hundreds of small Adriatic Islands that have gorgeous beaches as amazing resorts. On the mainland the cities are just dripping in history. Throughout it's history Croatia has been under the influence of several ruling countries and that history is reflected in the architecture, the art and the food. I know this is something that my history buff fiancee would love!

I had no idea just how beautiful this country is:

Paddling around one of the many Adriatic Islands

Rovinj, Croatia

Split, Croatia

I could go on an on....
Apparently Croatia has been gaining popularity among Europeans as vacation destination for several years, but here in the states it's fairly undiscovered. One of the best things about honeymooning in Croatia...the money! Hotels are incredibly reasonable and the high(est) season for tourism doesn't start until July! Which means we can still enjoy low(er) prices for our June honeymoon.
J is sound asleep right now, so I haven't has a chance to sell him on the idea yet, and it's taken all my self control not to wake him up yelling "look at this look at this!!!" Fingers crossed that he loves it!

Thin Thursday...uhhhh....what?

Ok, ok...yes, I am a horrible person. I have once again completely neglected my promise to keep Thin Thursday a weekly staple. Bad Bride! That isn't to say that I haven't been working out. I have...sort of.

I hit a bit of a road block on my way to health and wellness when J and I took a week long camping trip. The trip was fantastic, 5 days in the woods followed by 3 days at my uncle's lake house. Even though we were roughing it out in the woods we weren't exactly eating nuts and berries the whole time. Can you say bacon?

I think I consumed more bacon on this trip than at any other time in my life. And on top of the bacon there were S'mores and Pudgie Pies:

Hungry???

And then there was the 3 days with my uncle and his wife and kids where butter isn't a condiment...it's a food group! So between the bacon, chocolate, pie filling and butter my eating wasn't what you would classify as "healthy."

But...I'm back and ready for action. And with a new looming deadline I've got pounds to drop! And no, I'm not talking about the wedding deadline (I've still got time for that)..I'm talking about engagement photos! Yep..it's that time already. Originally we were going to have our photos taken in late October or November...but then we found out the wonderful news that our photographer was having a baby! YAY Casey! But..she's due in December and is going on maternity leave starting in late October. Which means we are now getting our pictures taken at the end of the month!! Holy crap!

So it's time to hop on the tread mill and get my ass in gear. Lucky for me, our school has a surprisingly nice gym and a great selection of group fitness classes, all of which is free for students during the semester. So now I can work in a work out while I'm up at school during the week. At least that's the plan....

Honeymoon??? Mini-moon??? No -moon???!!!

One of the topics that J and I have been discussing at length is our honeymoon. Since we both love to travel we want our trip to really be something special and something memorable, but we also need it to be affordable. Unfortunately memorable and affordable are two words that don't really get along very well.

Our original thought was to do a 12 night Mediterranean cruise. J and I LOVE Europe and to spend two weeks exploring the Greek Isles would be amazing. We found a great itinerary that we love with Princess Cruises. We'd be sailing on the Ruby Princess from Venice to Rome with stops in Athens, Mykonos, Croatia and several others.

We loved everything about this idea, except the price. We'd be traveling in June which is the high season in Europe. High Season=High Prices. The cruise price we could handle, the airfare was another story.
So we began looking at other options. There were some 10 and 12 night Caribbean cruises that seemed nice, but we don't really want to spend our entire trip warding off the local vendors. Although we did like the idea of having a few at sea days to just relax and enjoy the ship; something that we wouldn't have with the Med cruise.

I tossed out the idea of renting a beach house in the South Carolina.

We could pack up the car and the dogs and spend a week laying on the beach. Plus we would be an hour for Charleston and an hour from Savannah which would make for some great day trips. History and relaxation all in one. Perfect!

J countered with Disney World, which I shot down right away. I don't think that we are the Disney Honeymoon type of couple. Plus, I would like to try and limit our encounters with screaming children if at all possible. He agreed, and we decided to shelve the Disney vacation for an anniversary.

It was at this point that I just began naming random places that might make a good honeymoon spot. Fiji!? Costa Rica?! Niagra Falls?! Door County?!

Then J offered up the suggestion of postponing our honeymoon....POSTPONING???!!! Are you f&!*#g kidding me?? I know us..I know how we operate, if we postpone it won't happen. It just won't, we will find some excuse not to go or some reason not to spend the money. He suggested a short, in-state, mini-moon right after we say "I do" and a full blown honeymoon in January, but I'm just not feelin' it. I think that if we are going to go, we should just go.

So now we are back to where we started. I'm stalking every discount cruise website I can find in hopes of striking a deal, but so far no luck. I think the next step is going to be calling a travel agent and seeing what sort of magic they can work with in our budget.

Anyone out there in blogland have any suggestions?

Thin Thursday...oh yeah that!

You may remember that I had the idea for Thin Thursday a few months ago and then it kind of died out. Well, it didn't really die out so much as life got in the way. Unfortunately during the months of May, June and July health and exercise fell very low on my list of priorities. That was not a good thing to let happen and I am certainly paying for it now. My energy is at an all time low, I've put on a few pounds, my digestive system is a mess (somewhere Jamie Lee Curtis is telling me to eat Activia) and I feel really disappointed in myself.

But I can't beat myself up for it, all I can do is learn from it and move forward. And helping me to move forward? Why it's Bob and Jillian from The Biggest Loser!

J and I are big fans of The Biggest Loser. Unfortunately in the past we usually would watch the show while eating Chinese take out....kinda defeats the purpose, I know. But, despite the fried rice and singapore noodles, we have still managed to learn a few things from the show and hopefully those tips combined with a 2 other tools will help me get started.
My first tool...Bob's book.

Ok, before you laugh, yes, I know, most weight loss books are a bunch of crap. And I know this one looks super cheesy. But for some reason I got pulled onto the "Bob Train" and I just can't get off! So I thought what the heck...I'll give it a shot. The book isn't very long, but it does offer some good tips for diet and exercise, plus the first few chapters offer some insight into the emotions behind weight gain and weight loss. After reading through it I did have a few revalations about why I eat what I eat when I eat and why I have such a difficult time getting motivated to exercise.

My second tool comes from good ol' ball-bustin' Jillian.

This video has been all over the wedding blog world for the last year..and there are lots of women who have and some pretty amazing results with it. I've tried it a few times...and everytime I find myself sweaty, sore and exhausted by the end...so obviously its doing something. Now I just have to start doing it on a consistent basis; my goal is 3-4 times a week.
So it's with Bob and Jillian that I plan to start my body transformation...but that's not where it ends. Next week I'll fill you in on some of the other things I've got up my sleeve to make sure that I will be fabulously healthy, fit and toned on my wedding day.

Uh-oh

When I first started planning the wedding I came across a term over and over again; "two dress bride." I quickly learned that a two dress bride is just that, a bride that fell in love with a dress and then fell more in love with another dress and come wedding day she had two dresses. Maybe she wore the first dress...but usually not.
I always rolled my eyes at those girls wondering, "why would you buy a dress if you weren't sure that it was 'the one?' " I mean I tried on 30 dresses before I bought mine, but I bought what I was sure was my one and only dress....

until today.

Today I came across this beauty while perusing some wedding blogs...

Isn't she lovely?
And just look at that deatail...



The back? Oy-vey the back...

She's from the Christos Spring 2010 collection...and I am in trouble.

I know...it is so wrong for me to show off another dress when I haven't even debuted the dress that I bought yet...I'm not even giving my first dress a fair shot. But I can't help it.
I haven't even looked at price yet; I haven't even thought about what I might tell J or my mom, and I haven't even tried to find a store that carries it. All I can do right now is look at the pretty pictures, keep telling my mom that I love my dress (because I do) and try not to think about it.

All the wedding's a stage...

Our choice of ceremony site has gone through several transitions through the course of wedding planning. Originally I wanted a barn wedding...complete with rustic hay bales and lemonade in mason jars.

Sadly, after much scouting I realized that a barn wedding just wasn't in our future unless we wanted to have a destination wedding to Middle-of-Nowhere, Wisconsin.

Then one night our former roommate, and now bridesmaid, Chelsea suggested a park near our house with spectacular views of the city.

We were both really excited about this choice and started to move ahead with plans for how to make it work. But then we hit some snags. The Milwaukee Water Department owns the park and because this was their first attempt at owning and operating a park they didn't really have their act together when it came to rules and regulations and rental information. Currently there isn't any electricity to the park; I was told there "might be hookups" by the time our wedding came around, but we may want to rent a back up generator "just in case." Hmmm...ok. The park is atop a large hill which could make it difficult for some guests to get up to the site. And finally there was the issue of weather. J and I took a walk up to our site a few days after some rain and the ground was still soggy and muddy; not good for heels and pretty white dresses. And since I haven't perfected my weather control skills I didn't know if the park was a weather risk I was ready to take.

It was at that point that we thought that maybe we should explore other options. J's church came up as an option, but I felt it was too far away and they had some crazy rules (no photos during the ceremony???!!! Are you kidding me??). My parents suggested some churches closer to our house, but I just didn't feel like a church wedding was for us.

We kept looking, getting more and more frustrated and then it happened....
One night this past winter J and I decided to go see The Wrestler and the Oriental Theater, which is close to our house. As I was sitting there waiting for the movie to start I got to thinking about what a great location the theater would be for a wedding.

You see, The Oriental Theater isn't your run of the mill movie theater, it's this amazingly restored vaudville theater with some of the most beautiful decor I've ever seen. The theater seats over a 1000 (not that we need that much seating), has a gorgeous balcony (hello pictures), and a huge grand staircase (the perfect setting for a first look). So as I watched Mickey Rourke wrestle across the screen, I fell in love. We had to have our wedding there...it would be beyond perfect; a Milwaukee landmark for our Milwaukee themed wedding!

J was skeptical though, he didn't think that the theater would be wedding friendly...but I had to try. The following day I contacted the manager of theater and began to try to work out the logistics. He said that they hadn't done weddings there in the past, but he was willing to give it a shot! And the price?? After what we would have spent in rentals and back up plans for the park we ended up paying about $75 less to rent the theater for an afternoon! We were sold and ready to sign, but my parents were another story.

When I first told them about the theater idea my mom's response was "What's so wrong with a church wedding?" We went back and forth for days about the merits of a church wedding, the difficult logistics of a theater wedding and concerns about what some family members would think. I told her that once she actually saw the theater everything would make sense. So one Saturday she and my dad came into town to have a look. My dad is an old movie/theater buff, who had been to The Oriental in it's heyday, and the minute he walked in you could see his eyes light up with excitement. He was sold...and it didn't take my mom long to fall in love with the idea either. After 20 minutes of walking around, discussing ceremony options and the perfect spots for pictures, my mom conceded that this really was the perfect spot for our wedding and very "us."

With the parents on board we signed the contract and started planning. There are a lot of logistical snags that we have to work out, but we've got enough time and people that it shouldn't be a problem.
So without further ado...I give you The Oriental...

Well this isn't good..

Since the start of all the wedding planning we were sure of two vendors we had to have, our photographer (more on her later) and our florist. Lynn is a close friend and cousin of my FMIL and she just happens to be a wonderful florist as well. I had worked with Lynn previously on some centerpieces for my MOH's shoe themed bridal shower last year.

She took shoes that I found at Goodwill and incorporated them into the centerpieces...

...and I think they turned out great!

Love the little shoe ornaments!

I was so happy with what she did and what I'd seen of her other work that I knew she had to do the flowers for the wedding.

This past weekend I had lunch with FMIL and she told me that with the economy the way it is, Lynn's shop was suffering and there's a chance that they might close! The shop is a real family business, with everyone including her mom working in the shop part or full time; I can't imagine losing something like that and my heart goes out to them. I just hope that they can find a way to ride this out and keep the business going.

Obviously I am most concerned about how they will make it through this, but I did have to think about what this means for the wedding planning and bugdet. Lynn had generiously offered us a sizable discount on the flowers (I think in part because FMIL promised her facials for the rest of her life; FMIL happens to be an anesthitician!). The discount had allowed us to move some of the money we had budgeted for flowers into other projects and details.

Because there is still so much up in the air for Lynn right now, I don't want to hit a sore spot and ask her about an event 10 months away when the next few months aren't even certain. What I am hoping is that she might still be willing to do the flowers if I supply the vases and the flowers. But I have no idea what sort of space she'll have or what her time constranits will be and I don't want to impose so I'm also going to start looking into other options. Unfortunately I've become rather attached to some of the details that we've been able to add with our shifted finances, so I'm thinking the DIY route may be the way to go. Or maybe I can do the centerpieces but have a florist do the boquets. Perhaps its time to look in the floral arranging classes at UWM???