Things are moving along

Matt and I got to cross of a few more items off of our wedding "to-do" list over the past week.
Last Sunday we met with Reverend Dennis to begin planning our ceremony. Reverend Dennis is very funny and down to earth. We are excited to be working with him and know that he will help us in planning a wonderful ceremony.

Matt and I also decided on a company to do our centerpieces for the reception. Lavish Weddings in Brookfield has a large variety of elegant and beautiful centerpieces for us to choose from. We will be deliberating over a few of our favorite choices in the coming weeks and hope to have centerpieces chosen soon.

This week I also made a decision on dresses for my bridesmaids! I had a certain dress in mind and was about to chose it, when I came across a Bill Levkoff dress that was just perfect. It's a very pretty dress and I know all of my bridesmaids will look beautiful in them.

8 and a half months to go!

Kawakami Wedding

This past Saturday we celebrated the marriage of Kari & Jeremy!!
We had a great time at their amazing reception.
It made us both very excited for our own quickly approaching wedding :)

Engagement Photos

Our engagement photos are in! We had SO much fun shooting with Ron from Jolie Images at Potowotomi Woods in Wheeling and The Leaning Tower in Niles. We love the end results :)
Here are just a few of our favorites!

Capturing Memories One Frame At A Time

Wedding planning has been in full swing lately! Today we booked our photographer/videographer! We are really excited to be working with Jolie Images (Wheeling, IL) for our special day. They offer a nice blend of photojournalistic, traditional, contemporary, and artisitic photography and their work is amazing. Can't wait to have our engagement photo shoot in a couple of weeks!

Ceremony/Reception Entertainment

We decided on and booked a DJ from An Enchanted Evening to provide music services for our ceremony and reception! Our meeting with the DJ went really well and we're super excited to be working with this company! We also are in the midst of planning entertainment for our cocktail hour. As of right now, it's under wraps as we want people to be surprised, but it'll definitly be fun and entertaining for all! Can't wait!!

Engagement Party!!

This past Saturday Matt and I celebrated our engagment with our family and friends. Despite a hiccup in the plans in the beginning, it turned out to be an amazing evening! Thanks to everyone who came out and helped us celebrate this special event with us. We love you all! xoxo

The Horah...courtesy of J.B. and the Alferes boys

With the venue booked, the reality of our engagment was finally hitting me. I wanted to go and try on some wedding dresses, just for fun, since I knew there was MORE than enough time for me to find a wedding gown. I tried a couple of places and found beautiful dresses in each store, however they dresses just didn't look good on me. Being so little I quickly realized the challenges in finding a wedding dress that looked good on me in all aspects. After 2 weeks, 5 stores, and 12 dresses, I was starting to fear that I'd never find a dress that I loved that would look right with my short height. A lot of the dresses I liked could have been shortened, however this would change the whole look of the dress. Then I remembered that two good friends had told me about a bridal boutique in Highland, Indiana shortly after our engagement. I decided that I should check his place out - and am I glad I did!! It was like a bride's dream store - so many gorgeous gowns for ALL shapes and sizes. Just like the other stores, I thought I'd look around and just try some dresses on for fun. The second dress I tried on was amazing. It was a beautiful Maggie Sottero private collection gown. I tried it on and come out to show my mom and "aunts". My mom and I never understood why girls cry when they find their ideal dress, but yet we both found ourselves tearing up. I knew this had to be the dress if my mom was crying! Although at that point I thought I had my wedding dress, I still wanted to try on the other dresses I had picked out that were still in the dressing room. After trying on 2 more that were immediately "no"'s, I tried on a dress that changed everything. This dress was the first one that actually made me feel like a bride! My mom was not thrilled with it but told me it's my day and my choice. After going back and forth between the 2 dresses, I decided to go with the second one. The seamstress immediately began measuring me and planning out how to customize it to make it look perfect on my body shape. Once it was pinned here and tucked there, my mom saw how the dress would look on me the day of the wedding and she agreed that I had make the right choice. I really feel like the dress was made for me and fits my personality perfectly. I can't wait to wear it on my wedding day and hope that Matt loves it as much as I do. I'm so gladd I said "Yes" to that dress!!

Location, Location, Location!

After Matt and I returned from Arizona, I got straight to work researching various ceremy and reception venues. Matt and I were torn on whether to have a traditional church ceremony or something different. Growing up in Chicago, I always attended St. Hyacinth Church, which in now St. Hyacinth Basilica. It is a beautiful church and a prime example of a "Polish Cathedral" style. This is where I had my First Communion and my Confirmation and I always dreamed I would also get married there so this was number 1 on my list at the beginning.





However, after looking into banquet halls near the church, none of them really thrilled us. Most were "been-there-done-that". We considered having the wedding in Chicago and the reception elsewhere, but didn't want our guests to have to travel all over the place. Slowly I set my dream church on the back burner and started exploring other options in the north and south 'burbs. One weekend I decided to go visit a couple of venues in Indiana and fell in love with all of them for their own reasons. They were all newer and more modern than halls we previously looked into. Once I narrowed it down to two locations that met all our needs, I couldn't wait for Matt to come see them and hoped that he would like them as much as I did! After he did, he agreed that one of the two locations was THE location. After weighing pros and cons of each, we made our final choice...and the winner is.... WICKER MEMORIAL PARK in HIGHLAND, IN!!!
Wicker Memorial Park features beautifully manicured grounds with trees, flowers, fountains and a prestine, white gazebo and includes an 18 hole golf course.
We will be getting married in the gazebo with the reception following in the Social Center just a few steps away. The reception room is amazing! It is VERY large. Holding 400 people, we get the whole room for our 200 guests!So it will be very spacious! The room features beautiful arched windows all around which overlook the park. Right out the doors of the room there is a large veranda that looks out at the gazebo and lake, both of which are lit up at night. The veranda includes high top tables where guests can come out, take a break from dancing, and get some fresh air. We are so excited to get married and celebrate with our guests at this beautiful location.

And the Planning Begins..

A couple of weeks after getting engaged Matt and I went to Scottsdale for a weeklong vacation. This gave us time to start thinking about some wedding details and do some planning! It was nice to get away from the cold, Chicago weather and enjoy sunny and 80 degree Arizona. While in Arizona, we began the process of putting our Wedding Party together! My bridal party includes my cousin Sylvia as my Maid of Honor and Kari Schaab, Caroline Schaab, Kimberly Alferes, Mary Clark, Jessica Biestek, Sarah Richards, Joanna Biestek, and Natalie Grabowski as bridesmaids and Lila Schaab as flowergirl! Matt's groomsmen are still a work in progress at the time, but so far include his brother Mike as his Best Man and groomsmen Jeremy Kawakami, Dennis Alferes, Ryan Natzke, Ryan McKay, and Jon Berkley. The set will be completed shortly. Being from two different areas, we started tossing around ideas as to where we would want to have our wedding ceremony and reception (North side, South side, or even Indiana since my hometown is so close to the border). We also chose our wedding colors - truthfully, I had ALWAYS imagined scarlet and pearl as being my wedding colors ever since I was a little girl, so although I would have negotiated with Matt if he didn't like those colors, he knew that is one of my favorite color combinations and agreed :)

The Proposal

Date: October 8, 2010

Matt and I were engaged on Friday, October 8, 2010. We had a vacation planned for the end of October and my birthday was in the beginning of November, so I sort of suspected that Matt might propose during one of those events. The day of the engagement, Matt took me to a park that we went to a couple of years back. We hung out, talked about our upcoming vacation, and enjoyed the nice day. After the park, we came home, got ready, and went out to dinner at Bar Louie. We had a great meal and were excited about going out that night to celebrate Matt's cousin's 21st birthday. A proposal was the last thing on my mind at this point, since I figured if it was going to happen, it already would have. On the way home from dinner while driving through Niles, I noticed a giant tower that resembled the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I was surprised because in all the years that I've been visiting Matt on the northside, I had never seen this tower. Anyone that knows me knows how much I love Europe and anything resembling it, so I was pretty excited about this tower! Matt acted as if he couldn't believe that he had never taken me there before and took a detour to visit the tower. We were walking around the Leaning Tower replica and I was admiring the tower and marveling at how much it resembled the real thing. Matt asked me if she could figure out the angle at which the tower leans, and while I was looking up, Matt got down on one knee and pulled out the ring. I was still looking up at the tower and hadn't realized what was going on - I thought he was just tying his shoe or something. Then Matt proceeded to get my attention and asked me to marry him! I was totally surprised and of course said "Yes!" with laughter.



This was taken almost EXACTLY 4 years ago (10/6/06). We went here the day of the proposal.

Another Try

With our recent engagement and wedding planning in full swing, many of our friends and family have wanted to keep up with everything. Due to work, school, being in different states, lack of time, it's been hard to include everyone on what is going on with us. Though I attempted a blog in the past, I didn't keep up with it very well. However, after being inspired by friends who have kept up with their blogs regularly and have a nice record of important events in their lives, I thought I'd give it another try. Hope you enjoy getting a glimpse of what Matt and I are up to!