Busy Weekend!

Wow! We've had a busy weekend of wedding planning...with over 800 miles of driving, too! Cary and I don't have class on Fridays so we headed up to Cumming, GA to meet with the wedding consultant from Windermere Golf Club. Jennifer showed my mom, Cary, and me around the clubhouse and answered all of our questions before drafting a contract for us. We plan to sign it and make it official soon! Cary and I both love this place, mainly because of its spacious indoor and outdoor seating. It was really important to us that our friends and family were comfortable and had a great time. There is also room for a dance floor, a large outdoor patio area, and great view of the beautiful golf course. We've arranged to have a low country boil (and alternatives for those who don't like seafood), which Cary is excited about!

Windermere Golf Club, Cumming, GA

Afterward, we headed to some of the local hotels to see the rooms and get some price quotes. Of the three main hotels closest to the church and Windermere, Holiday Inn Express was the best. It is the newest (only 7 months old), most modern (looks like it belongs on HGTV), and has the largest rooms (the suites are amazing), not to mention it was the least expensive! We highly recommend this hotel to our guests, and we will set up a group rate soon. If however, you wish to stay at other hotels (maybe because of reward points, etc), beware of Comfort Suites. It has "seen better days" as my mom says, and it was very disappointing.
We headed back to Augusta that afternoon so that we could participate in MCG's Physical Therapy School's White Coat Ceremony on Saturday morning. This ceremony was symbolic of our achievement and readiness to treat patients as physical therapists. Then it was off to Tate, GA for Eric and Diana's wedding, where we saw several of Cary's fraternity brothers and had a great time. It is fun for us to see weddings and take notes.

Fun with the "Gun" a.k.a. Registering

So Cary and I recently finished our wedding registries. We decided to register at Bed, Bath, and Beyond as well as Dillard’s. My wedding etiquette book says that three registries is optimal, but after finding out that Lowe’s and Home Depot no longer offer wedding registries, we decided to just stick with two. We thought it would be fun to talk about the experience from both of our perspectives.
Cary's perspective: When Kelly asked me to check with Bed Bath and Beyond about how they do their registry, I obliged and called their consultant. She mentioned pre-registering online and then coming into the store. I did that and quickly realized that the more things I added online from our list, the less time we'd be in the store. It's so much simpler to type in what you want, click and done. Don't get me wrong, walking around the store is fun for a little while, but after an hour, I was ready to sit back in front of the computer. If I know what I want, having distractions to make me second guess myself doesn't expedite the process.

It's amazing how much stuff a store has. We started off looking at silverware as I call it. I guess the fancy term is flatware. My criteria: not too heavy, not too big, and can go in the dishwasher. There are still over 50 that meet that criteria. Kelly would ask "do you like this one" and "are you sure you like that one" but I always told her that if the silverware met my criteria, I was fine with it. I don't know where we went next, but I kept seeing people with these big packets of paper walking around. Once we were finished registering, we got our own large packet of paper. A printout of every item on the registry which was 17 pages long. It is kind of surreal to think that in less than a year, many of the items from this packet will actually be sitting in our home. It's exciting, too.

And my perspective couldn't be complete without adding a blurb about coupons. Bed Bath and Beyond has coupons for 20% off a single item, and I encourage you to use them.

Kelly's perspective: Cary had been wanting to complete our Bed, Bath, and Beyond (BB&B) registry online, but I had insisted that we go in person, we would be missing out on the experience if we did it all online! We got to BB&B around 10:00am and met with the wedding consultant. After making sure we had signed up correctly online (Cary wanted to get that out of the way, so did it online a few days earlier) and explaining a few things, she gave us our gun (which was actually a small scanner that did not resemble a gun), and let us loose in the store.

We started off with the flatware section and immediately felt overwhelmed with choices. Of course, Cary didn’t really have an opinion, so I picked a couple that I liked and asked him to help me make the final decision. We then looked over all of their everyday china and dishes. I had already decided not to get a fine china because I hope to one day get my mom’s china. We opted for an everyday set of white dishes instead. However, this wasn’t as easy to find as you would think. Turns out that Cary and I are very picky when it comes to dishes. He didn’t want anything square, and I didn’t want anything too modern or crazy. Well nothing in the store fit that description (hard to believe, I know!), so we wound up going home and searching BB&B’s website for the set we finally decided on. We then headed to the pots and pan section. We were much more focused here because we knew what we wanted. We love Calphalon because it is so durable and comes with a lifetime warranty. Plus, the company makes almost every kitchen gadget, utensil, bakeware, and cooking device you could ever want. And to make things even better, the Calphalon representative was in the store…so we picked her brain and asked a bunch of questions. Next, we went to the gadget section of the store and registered for many of those Calphalon gadgets I mentioned as well as lots and lots of other kitchen “essentials.” But this quickly became overwhelming. It is so hard to decide between five whisks…I mean which model do I really need. By this point our blood sugar was low and the fun had waned. We decided to take a break from it all and grab lunch. We turned in the “gun” and headed to Panera for a quick bite of lunch with my mom who happened to be in town that day. We decided to finish things up online, which I admit was a lot quicker.

So with the BB&B registry complete (after visiting the store once more and doing some of it online), I was fine with completing the Dillard’s registry online. This was my fun/splurge registry. I picked out several serving pieces and UGA memorabilia from Arthur Court, a designer known for his metal work. I found a few other items to add, but overall, I kept this registry very short. The items aren’t cheap but they will last a lifetime and are beautiful.

Overall, registering was a lot of fun…it was very exciting to know that we will start our married lives with brand new towels, dishes, and whisks, but it is kind of difficult at the same time because we were choosing items that we’ll use and keep for the rest of our lives…we better like them!

On the books...

We have selected our date for the wedding. It will be May 22, 2010 in Cumming, GA. We'll be having the wedding at my home church, Cumming First United Methodist Church, but the time nor reception site have been chosen. We are continuing to look at reception sites so feel free to leave us some tips from your experience.

Kelly and I will both have 4 attendants. Click here for a full listing of our wedding party. We have also launched a website with more information specific to the wedding. Our web address is http://www.caryandkelly.com so feel free to check it out. Sorry for the advertisements from godaddy; it allowed us to have a free site. We'll be going to Bed Bath & Beyond this week to work on the registry and we will have a post about that experience later on.

No date yet...

I know that many people have been asking, but we still have not decided on a date. Cary and I are trying to get through this last week and a half of school (please pray that our test and practical go well)! Then we will be off to Mexico for a mission trip with MCG's Medical Campus Outreach. After that we plan on focusing on the wedding and nailing down a date and location. Sorry to keep you in suspense, and thanks for the well wishes.

We're engaged!

Who knew that a fun trip to Athens, GA would result in a sweet engagement, beautiful ring, and one very happy couple?! I've been asking Cary to go to Athens for some time....if you went to UGA then you know you just can't resist the charm of Athens and you always love going back. So since it was our spring break (a.k.a. Augusta is crazy due to Masters Week...everyone get out of town), we thought, what better time to get away? Of course, I had no clue he was going to propose!

We started the day off with lunch at Marti's at Midday. If you haven't eaten there, you must. It is off of Prince Ave and has the best sandwiches, salads, and cookies...everything is homemade by Marti herself. Next, we went to Jittery Joe's, a coffee shop, to study. Yes, study. In grad school, the studying never ends, not even for spring break and an impending proposal. After a few hours of studying, we headed downtown.

We walked around downtown and did some window shopping. It was such a beautiful day and it was definitely your average Athens afternoon with lots of students bustling around the town with their dogs, books, and friends. All of the restaurant and bar patios were full...ah, memories. At this point Cary told me that he was cold and needed to go get his jacket from the car. Cold? How could he possibly be cold? It was beautiful and warm and sunny that day. I was wearing a sleeveless top, as you can see. But you see, he needed to go back to the car to get the ring. The ring box was too big to fit in his pants pocket!

After returning from the car, he suggested that we go and walk on North Campus (which for you non-Dawg fans, is the most beautiful spot in Athens besides maybe Sanford Stadium). We eventually made our way to Herty Field, a green space located on North Campus that is full of benches and lots of beautiful flowers and a fountain. We went and sat on a bench...well not just any bench. This was the bench we sat on when he first told me he loved me, over a year ago.

I know you are thinking that I should be suspicious by now, but I really wasn't! Cary had convinced me that the proposal was going to be later, probably in May, because the ring might take up to 6 weeks to come in (while that was true, it COULD take 6 weeks, it ended up being ready in 3 days!).

Cary then recited I Corinthians 13:4-8, the love chapter, and we discussed how we had done over the past year and several months with the Bible's definition of love.

To prove how oblivious I was to what was about to happen, I decided that I needed to go to the bathroom. I'm sure Cary was freaking out a little at this point, since I was interrupting our perfect moment. I went to the library and quickly came back. By that time, Herty Field had cleared out and there was no one around....so it actually worked out well to take a little bathroom break.

When I returned, Cary picked up where he left off, and explained how he wanted to act on that love we had discussed. He got down on one knee, pulled the ring out of his jacket pocket, took my left hand, and asked me to marry him. And of course, I said YES! We quickly called our family and friends and celebrated by ringing the chapel bell (a UGA tradition) and eating a delicious dinner at Porterhouse (my favorite restaurant in Athens).