Engagement Entertainment

Our first solo trip as a couple was to Disneyland. For any students who believe they won't have to use research skills after college, let me be the first to dispel the myth. Even if you graduate and plan to never write a report, essay, or research paper again, you are absolutely going to experience situations where you will sort through and uncover credible information. And that's not just my librarian side talking. Whether it's to buy a car, find a healthcare provider, manage your finances, learn a new skill, get the perfect gift, raise a new baby, schedule a vacation, or plan a wedding, you have to know how to search, compile, evaluate, and synthesize information. Luckily, as a librarian, these are skills that I have practiced with tasks I enjoy doing. So I've done a lot of research for the wedding part. What I didn't initially realize was that planning a honeymoon would be just as much work! Fun work. Librarian work. But still, almost like planning ...

The engagement photos are back, and I couldn't be happier with the results! We managed to work in my favorite romantic shots and ideas, along with a touch of Beauty and the Beast , and a whole lot of library! Reading is not just a favorite pastime of ours--we both work in libraries! Without them, we never would have met! So I'm happy to start off our happily ever after with these photos (already on our Save the Date cards, which just shipped!). View the gallery , or some of my favorites below! Special thanks to our awesome photographer Deidra Wilson !

If there's one part of wedding planning I thought would be easy, it was the shopping part. A registry is all about shopping for the things you need (and want, and can't live without) to start your new life together, or at least a new adventure (I know honeymoon registries are becoming more popular these days). I decided to start old school, because I love all things "kitchen" and only own one frying pan. After many, many, many debates on where we should register (and by "we" I mean "I," because dear fiance did not have a preference), we landed on the makers of fine cookware, Sur La Table . They have a store in Las Vegas' Fashion Show Mall, they're similar to  Williams-Sonoma  (but I've seen almost every WS product already during my early 2000s Food Network phase), and "Sur La Table" is French (meaning "on the table"), which fits my  Beauty and the Beast theme! The registry will be rounded out with items fro...

My love of photography has been developing for a long time.  There was a time I could snap at any moment. Don't like a good photo pun? It was worth a shot. But seriously, photography is an important part of my life. I received my first camera when I was seven years old. My crowning achievement that year was taking  Van William's portrait (the star of the original Green Hornet ) and hearing him compliment my tiny camera and tiny self at a convention with my dad. I was a fan (I'd watched every episode of The Green Hornet reruns my dad played for me), and I was always taking pictures. My tribute to the fallen Green Hornet: My first camera, merch from the movie remake, and my personalized autograph from Van Williams himself. In high school I rose up the ranks to President of Photo Club. I developed my own black and white pictures. I carried a digital camera in my purse until cell phones became the cameras. Today I collect vintage cameras and volunte...

We joined a gym! Not specifically for the wedding, but I can use it as an excuse. EOS is nearby, friendly, with cool amenities like Cardio Cinema (watch a movie while you jog!), fitness classes, and a sauna in the locker rooms. My favorite part about joining a gym was finding " Sweating for the Wedding " T-shirts and silicone rings to wear while working out. No seriously, I love to jog but I love to shop more....

If I could recommend only one thing to help in future wedding planning, it would be...a notebook. Trust me, whether you prefer to write in print or electronically, make sure you pick one--there will be lots of notes to take. If I could recommend two things to help in future planning, it would be a notebook and a checklist. This checklist can be found in a great wedding guidebook like The Ultra Simple Bride's Wedding Planning Guide that my friend recommended to me, or in a copy of MyWedding magazine or The Knot's website  and app. The checklist helped me organize the notebook, figuring out what items I would need and what decisions I would have to make. Each area became a tab (made easily from mini sticky notes) with a few pages allocated for jotting down information in each section. I granted more pages to the big ticket items like venue and photographer, and fewer pages to the smaller decisions like hair and makeup artists. Just a notebook. A thick one. Tabs....

After reading countless wedding blogs--and now, from first-hand experience--I've learned that the first thing people will want to know after you get engaged is your wedding date (sorry, that takes a while to lock down!). But the second thing they will want to know is how the proposal happened. You will have to tell it over and over, and then over again when someone new finds out or just enters the room mid-story. It doesn't hurt to write down the whole experience in attempt to capture all those wonderful feelings while they are still fresh--and then send people the link. So I did: It's not like I didn't think a proposal was coming...eventually. We'd been dating for five years, and he promised that once he sold his house and had no more debts or responsibilities to bring into the relationship, we would move forward toward marriage. His house closed on May 30. I tried not to be too antsy after that. Sure, it was about time, but I didn't want to expect a ring th...

It's finally happened--10 years since my last boyfriend, five years with my current boyfriend, and 10 months after I turned the big 3-0. At long, long last, I can actually say (you know, without pretending) that I have a fiance. I can walk into David's Bridal and not feel the way adults feel walking into Chuck E. Cheese's: "This place is not for you. You can go in with those who do belong. You can look. But before the day is over, someone's going to end up crying." Now I'm not one of those girls who, at four years old, would dress up in toilet paper veils and imagine the perfect dream wedding (I swear!). At four years old, I was more interested in being a doctor and a mom. Boys were nice, of course. I had my first crush in Kindergarten when Nicholas T. said he wanted to marry me. I figured that was cool and proceeded to "like like" Nick up until first grade when he started hanging out with the new girl, Jessica. A few weeks of this went by unti...