The Iron Horse Hotel – Wedding Venue Visit #1

Friday evening Ryan and I had our first wedding venue visit at The Iron Horse Hotel in downtown Milwaukee. We were pretty excited because this finally felt like our first step toward wedding planning. Yes we have a date, and a church but honestly that’s it. Of course it feels real, but it’s hard to picture having an actual wedding….when you have no venue.

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Anyways, our first visit went very well. It has such a unique, boutique hotel vibe that we both really thought fit us well. The cost was…decent and around what we are willing to pay (and not cry ourselves to sleep every night). They work well with other vendors and have great meal prices and selections. Sounds perfect right?

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Well one problem. A kind of major problem. They only have 100 guest rooms.

Okay, no big deal. We can handle that.

 

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Except we can only be guaranteed 10 rooms set back for our guests. 10 rooms?! Uhh with 175 guests I don’t think blocking off TEN ROOMS will even come close to covering it! We were both really disappointed because there’s really nothing else keeping us from snatching up the place for September 2, 2012. There aren’t any other hotels close enough and our guests will be…drinking and I don’t want them to have to pay for a cab to get across town after paying to come to our wedding AND getting us a gift. I’d just feel too guilty and I want our guests to enjoy themselves and not have to worry about getting a ride elsewhere.

I e-mailed 5 more venues on Saturday after freaking out about not being able to find the perfect place. They all responded back today but…none seem comparable to The Iron Horse. One was way too expensive, two already had that date filled, and two are closer to our price range but still more than what we want to pay.

We’re hoping to look at a few more venues and see if we like anything else. I’d really love for our reception to be downtown so people get to experience Milwaukee and get to see the downtown area but we will see. I’m also highly considering connecting with the wedding coordinator of The Iron Horse to see if he is willing to block off more rooms for us if we guarantee guests will book there (I’m talking so sure that we will offer to pay for any rooms that aren’t used up…because I know that they will be).

We shall see!

Q: Is it okay to negotiate with a venue? Did you have to make sacrifices on what you wanted on your wedding day?

New Post Coming

New post coming soon…with pictures. And fun from the weekend. And a new happenings in life.

But for now I’ll leave you with this:

What a day!

It’s not even noon I’ve accomplished so much! I woke up around 6:30 to take out the Murph-man and he had somehow got the string off of his cone during the night, but still had the cone on his head. Not sure how that happened but at least the cone was still on.

After that I had half a banana with some almond butter as my pre-workout snack. If I work out in the morning I do best if I have a little something in me. I can’t eat too much or I am sluuuuggish and it just doesn’t end well.

Workout

I did 20 minutes on the elliptical doing intervals. 20 minutes is pretty much all I can stand on their at once because I get super bored and sometimes my feet fall asleep. Does that happen to anyone else?

I then moved to the treadmill for another 15 minutes and finished with some random strength training. There were only 3 of us there that early in the morning and it was nice. One guy had a breathing machine with him! If he can go to the gym then I know I sure can!

Food

After the workout I still wasn’t really hungry so I had a blueberry banana smoothie w/ skim milk and ground flax. I used our new magic bullet and holy amazing I already in love with it.

Mmm, delicious.

Lunch consisted of a salad with feta, romaine lettuce, tomatoes, homemade croutons & salad dressing (just basalmic vinegar, mustard, olive oil) and a turkey sandwich  with pesto & mustard

I’m currently finishing up some freelance articles and paying off some bills. Makin’ money to spend money!

Storms, Storms, Storms

It sure is stormy here in Milwaukee! This is what it looks like:

Grosssssss. I want it to be summer! Like, yesterday! I’m getting so annoyed with the weather here. I think that’s why I’ve been in a funk lately. Here’s to hoping the weekend is swell!

In other news, Murphy (our doggie) got neutered today. I felt SO bad for him. He really hates wearing the cone but…he’s a licker so it’s a must. I can’t tell if he realizes something has happened. I guess he does, dogs are super smart (sometimes…). He seems to have almost the same amount of energy though, so hopefully he’ll be raring to go soon enough.

Workout

I totally slept thru my alarm this morning. AND I totally had plans to go after picking Murphy up, but he looked so sad and I really didn’t want to leave him alone again after having a rough day. Tomorrow is another day!

Dinner

I wanted to finish up some squash and zucchini I had so I made a stir fry with mushrooms, onions, squash and zucchini with a little olive oil, salt & pepper. I didn’t have enough to make a whole meal so I had a delicious BLT (with low sodium bacon so that made it a little more nutritious).

Oh yeah, and Ryan comes back tomorrow! Yahoo! He’s been gone to Alabama for work Monday-Wednesday and I’m excited for him to get back (and help me keep an eye out for Murph-man. Well, it is now pouring again outside so I’m gonna head off to catch some quality tv!

Emily & Tom’s Wedding

Hi friends! Sorry I’ve been MIA…but I have a good reason! A good friend from college got hitched this weekend in my hometown. This was the first time I’ve came “home” since I moved to Milwaukee so it was also a nice time to see my parents.

We took off on our 8 hour journey to Posey County around 1 pm. This was Murphy’s longest trip in the car and we hoped he wouldn’t get sick or go crazy. Obviously, I took pictures so he would be distracted

I sleepy

 

I hate that you take so many pictures of me!

Most trips consist of me taking an annoying amount of pictures…

This is my "woo road trip!" face

The 8 hours went pretty fast. I provided the entertainment by singing and dancing for more than half of the trip. What can I say, I’m talented

We stayed at the New Harmony Inn in New Harmony, Indiana. New Harmony is a very small town that is cute and full of characters. We wanted to walk around the town before the wedding, but it was pouring down rain pretty much right up until the wedding.

                 

Grippos, Water & Andes mints...all essential to a wedding weekend!

The wedding was so much fun. It was so nice to see people that I hadn’t seen in a long time (and to show my ring!). You only get a few photos because I’m sure the people photographed would appreciate that.

         

The drive home was literally the longest. drive. ever. I slept pretty much…6 hours of it, I’m not used to staying up so late anymore! It’s been a catch up Monday, that’s for sure! Until tomorrow…night night!

 

 

 

 

 

I’m Back!

Well these past few days have been cra-zy! I had friends visit this past weekend and we took them out downtown which was fun. We went to Brother’s bar (which also has a location in West Lafayette where I went to college) and it was….different. A lot more bro-tastic for my liking, but we still had a good time. Especially since we stayed up until 4 AM!!!! I was one tired pup the next day.

On Monday I had to go to Chicago for work and I got to try a traditional Chicago deep dish pizza. It was soo good, but so HUGE! I had to cut the slice in half and I still felt so full.

I finally cashed in my SNAP Fitness Groupon this week, which I got 3 months for a total of $30, including the key! Morning workouts begin next week and I’m excited!

Not much else on the news front besides….WE HAVE A WEDDING DATE! September 2, 2012 woo WOO. Our church is open and we are looking at a venue next Friday!

Speaking of weddings, we will be going to one this coming weekend in my hometown. It will be nice to see the ‘rents and some old friends. I’ll be sure to report back with tons of pictures

Day Two

Evening! Day two of blogging and I’m still going strong. The weather here in Wisconsin has been crazy. It was supposed to rain and storm but…nothing ever happened and it just stayed uncomfortably hot. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be 59 degrees…what the heck Wisconsin?! Just decide on a season and go with it!

Anyways, I wanted to take this post to talk about my (our) upcoming WEDDING! Ryan (fiance) and I have only been engaged for a little over a week and I (we) are so excited! I really wanted to use this part of this blog to document all of the fun (and not so fun…) aspects of planning a wedding. I’m hoping both of our families & friends can use this to keep up-to-date with all of the shenanigans of our adventure (that way I don’t have to call everyone every since time we make a decision).

So far, there’s not much set to be honest. We are thinking of having the special day on Labor Day weekend 2012. Seems like foooorever away but it’s what will work best for us. There’s no way I could plan it for this September and we really would like it on a long holiday weekend for people to be able to travel (and now on an anniversary we get an extra day off!)

We are talking with our church this coming weekend about the date and hopefully it is open! We have an appointment for a possible reception place as well at the Iron Horse Hotel in a couple weeks. I will definitely give an update for that (pictures included!).

Besides that there’s not much else to update on. 3 out of my 4 bridesmaids have been contacted, all said yes! I feel like after we have the date set with the church everything will take off at once. I have no idea what I want with basically anything so it will be interesting to say the least.

Until next time!

Hello blogland!

Hi Ya’ll! I’ve tried to start other blogs before (I won’t even name them because I wasn’t able to keep up with them!) But this one is different.

Wanna know why?

Because I’m not restricting myself.

I guess I always thought that I would have to have some sort of theme to my blog to make it official.

Healthy living blog. Life blog. Professional blog. Take pictures of what I eat blog. Photography blog. Document the city where I live blog.

I enjoy all of those aspects of my life and plan to document all of them. No restrictions necessary!

Stay tuned for updates