Hair

I'm having a bit of a dilemma. So far I am planning on growing out my hair for the wedding, just so I have more style options, but I can't decide if I want to start growing it now or cut it short a couple more times. I like my hair short, and so does Darryl, but I'm starting to miss having long hair. For one thing, I can simply pull it back in a pony tail at work instead of constantly dealing with bobby pins or clips to keep it in place. Also, certain outfits just look better with longer hair. However, certain other outfits look cute with short hair, and it's easier to style, besides at work. Or I could go even shorter than usual just for the heck of it before I grow it out.

I'm up for suggestions.

the office

I work as a back-office assistant (RDA) in a pediatric dental office, Irvine Kid's Dentist. My co-workers include Carmen (far left) who works at the front desk, Merissa (center) who is in the back with me, and Maria the office manager. We all started around the same time as interns and have speant around 40 hrs. a week together for over a year now. I'm very grateful to work with people who I not only get along with, but can honestly label as close friends. In this picture, taken about a week ago, we're out with the doctors celebrating Carmen and Merissa's 21st birthdays which were 4 days apart.

As you can see in the picture, all three of us got engaged within the past few months. Carmen was first, and had to endure the rest of us giving her a hard time about sneaking a peak at her ring before her fiance gave it to her. It was also around this time that Darryl slipped-up and confessed that he was planning on trying to get my ring and propose by my birthday, causing me to analyze every move he made and word he said for the next few months with the girls during our lunch hour. One of the doctors in our practice got married last fall, and once she realized that we were all on the brink of planning our own weddings, she fed the obsession with a big stack of her own wedding magazines. They have their own special shelf in our breakroom which we lovingly call "the wedding porn library." For weeks we poured over every one of them, pointing out to each other what we liked and disliked, fantasizing about our own big days.

I don't think anyone else (besides me) was more eager for Darryl and I to get engaged than these two. As much as the suspense was killing me, they also dealt with it everyday as we delved into the agony and ecstasy of wedding planning. The day that it finally happened, they were the first ones who got a text message of the announcement, and also the first to reply back their enthusiasm.

It was another two months before Merissa received her ring on her birthday in April. Needless to say, being the last to get it when you know it's coming soon isn't easy. Carmen and I were about ready to call her fiance, Brad, and demand to know what he was up to because it was killing all of us. But she finally got her wish, and she can finally pose with her (huge!) ring right with us.

Maria the office manager, on the other hand, is the perpetually single one, and gives us the hardest time out of anyone for getting married so young, or at all for that matter. So if anyone knows any tall, blonde, super hot guys who are looking for a date, let me know!

So congrats guys! Our waiting is finally over!

Darryl's Graduation

Congratulations, Darryl, on no longer being a nerd, but a college-educated nerd! I'm so proud of you!

Wedding website

Our wedding website is up! You can find it at...
http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/AdenaDavis&DarrylRoyster

Some of the information is not completely complete yet, but it's mostly done. Check back in a few months after I have more info.

If you're wondering why I'm writing this so late, it's because I have the day off of work tomorrow since my office has been rather slow lately due in part to the state of the economy, and also in part to state standardized testing this week. Hopefully they won't cut my hours much further so that I'll be able to afford this fairy tale wedding of our's. But I am going to make the most of my day off and get some things done for the party.

See you all at Darryl's graduation!

PaperSource

A moment ago I finally got around to assembling the invitations for our engagement party. I purchased the supplies at the finest stationery store South Coast Plaza has to offer: PaperSource. While most brides-to-be may settle for a mere notecard style package of fill-in invitations, this simply would not do. Similar to wedding invitations, but on a cheaper and more casual scale, making custom invitations from this brand involves the mixing and matching of notecards, envelopes, envelope liners, notecard shashes, seals, and possibly a flourish of some kind. The possibilities are endless! So needless to say, at the mere idea of throwing a party for ourselves I became quite excited to actually have an excuse to go to this Mecca of decorative papers and be able to design invitations of my very own; a kind of practice-run for our save-the-dates and wedding invites.

I only needed at most 10 invitations, so I figured that this should be a fairly cheap and easy endeavor. I had a free afternoon two weeks ago after church, which happens to be fairly close to South Coast, so I was eager to go and fulfill my creative destiny. I think I spent at least an hour walking around the store in circles, my mind spinning with possibility. It was actually more frustrating than I expected. Since I only needed a small number of invites, it seemed that buying a package of inkjet-compatible notecards would be best, and there was entire quarter of the store devoted to them, yet none of them seemed quite right. They all seemed either too girly, or not girly enough, too dark, or too plain. I was about ready to give-up and send out evites. And then...there they were. I had probably walked past the window display 5 or 6 times without noticing them. A perfectly coordinated kit of rather cute, blank invites with all of the components I was looking for in different color combos, at half the price of buying the individual papers. Success! I made my purchase, and now here they are, ready to be addressed and mailed-off to our guests. To the naked eye, they're nothing that special, but to me and other stationery freaks alike, they're perfect.