 iStockphoto Well, ladies, I did it! (Or, I sort of did it, chickened out, and then my mom did it for me). Either way, I am now in the possession of my wedding shoes! (Even if I did kick and scream all the way to the register). {Ed Note: In case you do not recall, Carly is afflicted with a disturbing and inexplicable disdain for shoe shopping. Read about it here.}
Last weekend, my mom and I scoured the King of Prussia mall searching for the least mother-of-the bride-looking dress for the mother of this bride. We visited each department store and some specialty stores as well, looking for her perfect dress. The tricky part was finding something that wasn’t super matronly (I have a hot mom!) but was still tasteful and not a bridesmaid dress. This charge was harder than it might sound, and my mom tried on quite a few dresses. In the end, though, we left the mall with two great contenders that she can decide between in the next three months (at no penalty so long as all tags are attached).
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 iStockphoto With our wedding only four months away (whoa that is soon!) it’s time for us to start thinking about invitations. In fact, according to my wedding planning checklist, we are really cutting it close by only starting this process now. Oops!
I have a few questions that are holding up my decision making, so I thought I’d share them with you, dear readers, in the hopes you could help guide me through this process.
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 Carly and Sean at their engagement party. During lunch with my co-workers yesterday, we started talking about how we each met our significant others. While some of those stories date back quite a while, my story with Sean began just three years ago. And since we’re coming up on the third anniversary of our first date, I thought I’d use this blog to do a little reminiscing.
People say that love comes when you least expect it, and I am a perfect example of this adage. I met Sean during my second (and final) year of grad school at the University of Delaware. Living in a college town as 25-year-olds, my roommates and I often found it hard to meet people our age. One night we decided we needed to get out of the college bar scene, and headed to the big city of Wilmington to have dinner. We had no expectations of a big night out, as we all had to work early the next morning. But after dinner, we headed to Catherine Rooney’s for a beer before heading home. And that’s where it all began—but I’ve already told you this part of the story.
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 Hemera Sean and I have yet to decide on our honeymoon destination and complete our gift registry. However, we are in the process of doing both—and are even considering combining the two to create a honeymoon gift registry.
While at a friend’s wedding this summer, we learned about online honeymoon registries. These friends had set up an account through HoneyFund.com where they could register for various honeymoon activities that guests could “purchase” for them. So, rather than giving cash, a guest might give an experience. For instance, say the couple wanted to take a sailboat ride to snorkel with some sea turtles. They would post this experience to their honeymoon registry and a guest could then buy that as their wedding gift. Gifts can range from a bottle of champagne to airline tickets, and anything in between. For higher ticket items, such as airfare or hotel stays, the items can be broken into smaller units, much like buying one place setting rather than all eight.
Sounds pretty cool, right?
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 iStockphoto And I swear by the moon and the stars in the sky
I’ll be there
I swear like a shadow that’s by your side
I’ll be there
Nothing could make by fourth-grade heart melt quite like All-4-One’s masterpiece love song “I Swear.” Now, my fourth-grade self may have been years from having a boyfriend, let alone getting married, but I swore (pun intended) this song would definitely be played during the first dance at my wedding (which, fingers crossed, would be to Jonathan Taylor Thomas). I confided this in my sister, Claire, knowing then she’d be my maid of honor and would totally support my decision. (I was wrong, and she still teases me about my corny song obsession to this day!)
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 iStockphoto I love food. I love searching for recipes online, and then experimenting in the kitchen. I love reading online restaurant reviews, blogs, and menus. And most of all, I love going out to eat!
Lucky for me, so does Sean!
On the weekends you can find us making our way through Philadelphia magazine’s Top 50 Restaurants. And no matter how much we love a restaurant, we try not to repeat because, fortunately for us, we are two food lovers living in a foodie town!
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 iStockphoto I’ve been feeling a lot like Paula Abdul recently. Not because I’ve been practicing my early 90s dance moves or because I’ve been taking crazy pills. (I have done neither.) It’s because Sean and I have been trying to decide on a band, and it feels a lot like the audition process for American Idol.
I’ve been to weddings with both DJs and bands, and see that each experience offers its own advantages. Originally, Sean and I had planned on booking a DJ, until we talked it over with my dad, who is very pro-band. So we immediately widened our search to include bands. Some initial searching lead me to a few local agencies, such as Brandywine and EBE. I called these agents to find out whether they had any bands available for our wedding date, and what the pricing was for them.
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 iStockphoto It recently occurred to me that I have a little over five months to go before my wedding. As I came to this realization, I felt a sense of both excitement and shock. It went something like this: YAY! Our wedding is SO SOON! …YIKES! Our wedding is so soon!
My experience with wedding planning at first was very hurry, hurry, hurry: Hurry up and make a guest list. Hurry up and find a venue/caterer. Hurry up and take engagement photos so that you can make and send your get save-the-dates. I think I was out of breath for the first three months of our engagement.
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 iStockphoto Baby, it’s cold outside.
And being the beach-lovers we are, Sean and I despise this cold weather. So all this bundling up has got us thinking about one thing: our honeymoon.
After some initial discussion of spending two weeks in Europe, we’ve shifted our focus south, to the Caribbean/Central America. While we know spending time exploring Europe would be amazing—and it will definitely be a place we visit in the next few years—we’ve decided that we need sun and sand to be the backdrop of this very special vacation, and who does that better than the islands?
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 Altrendo Images Sometimes, life hands you lemons. And it sucks and you have to do what you can to turn it into lemonade. Other times though, life just pours you a tall glass of lemonade and says “Relax, I got this.”
Sean and I were given some wedding news that very well could have been a sour sack of lemons, but much to our excitement, this news is of the lemonade variety.
Ok, enough with the metaphors, I’ll just tell you what happened.
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