Hello World!

For many you, this will be the first post you read from us! Well, welcome! Hope you enjoyed our card! And we better see it on your fridge when we come to visit! just kidding. Anyway, we started blogging early so we could test things out and such before we shared it, so feel free to back track through the blog. To the left you'll find the rest of our engagement pictures, some fun songs and the ability to get our posts emailed to you! We'll mostly be posting about our wedding plans as they are made and about any fun adventures we have. So stayed tuned! Thanks for stopping by.

New Fun Stuff!

So I've been working the past few hours to get some functions added to the sidebar of the blog, and they are now live, I hope. We've added a slideshow of our engagement pictures, which if you click on the slideshow it should take you to the entire album. Lisa and I (very much mostly Lisa) edited them ourselves, and we hope you enjoy them as much as we do. They were taken by Lisa's sister Michelle, and we think she did a wonderful job and we're thankful that she did it for us. We also created a music playlist, full of songs that we love and feel describe our love, so give that a listen, we'll be updating it occasionally. Also, you can follow our blog by email if you wish. Hope you enjoy all the new features.

Wedding Colors!

As you might be able to tell from our background, these are our wedding colors! They are from the Alfred Angelo line: Jade, Lipstick and Champagne. We aren't too sure whats going where or how much of each, but we've got plenty of time to figure that out!

Our first plane ride together!

     Our first plane ride together took us to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. From there, we went to Webster, South Dakota (where Josh is from, if you didn't already know that). The first time at the airport together was a bit stressful, since we both fly rather frequently and each have our own routine, but the way back was a bit smoother. I met the ENTIRE family. :) And we got to celebrate Josh's parents' anniversary, Josh and Russ's (his twin brother) birthday and Megan's (Josh's sister) birthday as well. August is a busy month in the Garry household!
     We enjoyed bike rides, board games and the lake during our trip. It was a really nice vacation, but there are too many bugs out here for me! Now it's time to get home and get to work moving!

The Bridal Show!

So on Sunday, we went to our first bridal show at Green Valley Ranch. I was super excited. We got to see bunch of vendors and venues and we won prizes! We tasted some great food, too. We took quite a few photo booth pictures, as we realized that is a must have for the reception. We also realized that we really like the idea of a country club for the wedding. Another, less happy, realization was the cost of a wedding. From what we are seeing right now, the chances of having a decent wedding for under $10,000 is slim.
On a better note! The things we've won so far (as I'm still getting notifications!):
60-minute in home massage!
Round of golf for 4 at Canyon Gate Country Club (worth $600)
3 day/2 night stay in the Caribbean- Bahamas, Dominican Republic or Mexico
Gift certificate (unknown amount) to Dream Entertainment
$300 gift certificate to American Laser Center
$500 gift card to Amazon!!

About the prizes a little bit, now.
So the vacation prize came with a little, big mistake. To claim our prize, we had to sit through a cooking show for Chef Master. This was both mine and Josh's first attendance to a hard sales pitch. And we fell for it. We bought 4 titanium pots for $1800. BUT! It came with a free professional knife block, a skillet, a lifetime warranty and another 5 day vacation! We got home that night and realized we just spent $1800 on 4 pots! What were we thinking!? So the next morning, we sent in our cancellation notice. Whew!

Although Josh plays golf, I don't and we don't know two other people that do, and we don't have clubs. So our goal is to sell the certificate for about $500, if possible.

I'm sure the Dream Entertainment and American Laser Center are just trying to entice us to us their business and we didn't really win anything there, but I'm still willing to hear what they have to say, see if it is worth it.

The Amazon gift card was by far the best! We got that in the mail yesterday and went on a shopping spree! We both got our school books for the semester and a few other essential items, plus my new camera!!!! Finally! I'm going to have an awesome camera again! Which I'm ecstatic about!

We're thinking if our luck continues likes this, we'll be able to win a good portion of our wedding! So the plan is to attend every bridal show from now until May 2013! But man, I need to print out labels with our information on them, I can't begin to tell you how many times I wrote down our information!

Love is: Saving Money Together

Since weddings cost so much, Lisa and I decided to collect our spare change as part of our savings for our wedding. Lisa had the idea of using a large water jug, and since it was just sit in our room, she decided to decorate it. The picture doesn't do the best job of showing it, since it's missing the stick-figure-us that she drew to the right of our names, and the bows that are tied on the neck. Here's what's written:

Josh & Lisa Love each other a whole ton and want to share it with the world, but sharing something so big with so many people costs lots of money. EVERY PENNY COUNTS.

I think she did a wonderful job decorating the jar.